International Migration and Security
Are immigrants an asset or a threat? Every day, newspapers in the Western world carry articles about illegal immigrants, asylum seekers and other migrants. The focus of these articles varies greatly from migrants as a threat to one or another important societal interest, to migrants as an important asset to those same interests. International Migration and Security brings information and analysis to the immigration debate. Experts from a variety of different disciplines – ranging from urban planning to judicial reform – are collected in this volume to consider the impact that immigrants and the concept of immigration has on their field. The key question examined is how movement of persons affects areas as diverse as health, national security, the welfare state, cuisine, identity, law and human rights, and the political, social and legal results. This innovative and interdisciplinary book provides new insight into the debates around immigration in the twenty-first century and will be of interest to all students and researchers in the area. Elspeth Guild is professor of European migration law at the University of Nijmegen and a partner at Kingsley Napley, a London law firm. She is the author of Immigration Law in the European Community. Joanne van Selm is senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, and senior researcher at the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, University of Amsterdam. She is co-editor of the Journal of Refugee Studies.
Transnationalism Series Editor: Steven Vertovec, University of Oxford
‘Transnationalism’ broadly refers to multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across the borders of nation-states. Today myriad systems of relationship, exchange and mobility function intensively and in real time while being spread across the world. New technologies, especially involving telecommunications, serve to connect such networks. Despite great distances and notwithstanding the presence of international borders (and all the laws, regulations and national narratives they represent), many forms of association have been globally intensified and now take place paradoxically in a planet-spanning yet common arena of activity. In some instances transnational forms and processes serve to speed-up or exacerbate historical patterns of activity, in others they represent arguably new forms of human interaction. Transnational practices and their consequent configurations of power are shaping the world of the twenty-first century. This book forms part of a series of volumes concerned with describing and analysing a range of phenomena surrounding this field. Serving to ground theory and research on ‘globalisation’, the Routledge book series on ‘Transnationalism’ offers the latest empirical studies and ground-breaking theoretical works on contemporary socio-economic, political and cultural processes which span international boundaries. Contributions to the series are drawn from Sociology, Economics, Anthropology, Politics, Geography, International Relations, Business Studies and Cultural Studies. The ‘Transnationalism’ series grew out of the Transnational Communities Research Programme of the Economic and Social Research Council (see http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk). It is currently associated with the Research Council’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society located at the University of Oxford (see http://www.compas.ox.ac.uk). The series consists of two strands: Transnationalism aims to address the needs of students and teachers and these titles will be published in hardback and paperback. Titles include: Culture and Politics in the Information Age A New Politics? Edited by Frank Webster Transnational Democracy Political Spaces and Border Crossings Edited by James Anderson
Routledge Research in Transnationalism is a forum for innovative new research intended for a high-level specialist readership, and the titles will be available in hardback only. Titles include: 1 New Transnational Social Spaces International Migration and Transnational Companies in the Early 21st Century Edited by Ludger Pries
11 Gender in Transnationalism Home, Longing and Belonging among Moroccan Migrant Women Ruba Salih
2 Transnational Muslim Politics* Reimagining the Umma Peter G. Mandaville
12 State/Nation/Transnation Perspectives on Transnationalism in the Asia-Pacific Edited by Brenda S. A. Yeoh and Katie Willis
3 New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home Edited by Nadje Al-Ali and Khalid Koser 4 Work and Migration Life and Livelihoods in a Globalizing World Edited by Ninna Nyberg Sorensen and Karen Fog Olwig 5 Communities across Borders New Immigrants and Transnational Cultures Edited by Paul Kennedy and Victor Roudometof 6 Transnational Spaces Edited by Peter Jackson, Phil Crang and Claire Dwyer 7 The Media of Diaspora Edited by Karim H. Karim
13 Transnational Activism in Asia Problems of Power and Democracy Edited by Nicola Piper and Anders Uhlin 14 Diaspora, Identity and Religion New Directions in Theory and Research Edited by Waltraud Kokot, Khachig Tölölyan and Carolin Alfonso 15 Cross-Border Governance in the European Union Edited by Olivier Thomas Kramsch and Barbara Hooper 16 Transnational Connections and the Arab Gulf Edited by Madawi Al-Rasheed
8 Transnational Politics Turks and Kurds in Germany Eva Østergaard-Nielsen
17 Central Asia and the Caucasus Transnationalism and Diaspora Edited by Touraj Atabaki and Sanjyot Mehendale
9 Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora Edited by Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh and Steven Vertovec
18 International Migration and Security Opportunities and Challenges Edited by Elspeth Guild and Joanne van Selm
10 International Migration and the Globalization of Domestic Politics Edited by Rey Koslowski
19 Transnational European Union Towards a Common Political Space Edited by Wolfram Kaiser with Peter Starie
*Also available in paperback
International Migration and Security Opportunities and challenges Edited by Elspeth Guild and Joanne van Selm
First published 2005 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2005 Elspeth Guild and Joanne van Selm for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors their contributions Typeset in Baskerville by Taylor and Francis Books Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-23658-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-38802-X (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–32654–0 (Print Edition)
Contents
List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction
ix x xvii 1
J OA N N E VA N S E L M
PART I
Political and Legal Security 1 Immigration and Regional Security
9 11
J OA N N E VA N S E L M
2 Rights Spillovers
28
JAC QU E L I N E B H A B H A
3 Human Rights for Immigrants and Immigrants for Human Rights
51
M O RT E N K J A E RU M
4 From Foreigners to ‘Abnormal Aliens’
64
DIDIER BIGO
5 Immigrants and the Host Polity
82
JEANNETTE MONEY
PART II
Cultural and Identity Security 6 Cultural and Identity Security
99 101
ELSPETH GUILD
7 Immigrants, Refugees and Racism ZRINKA BRALO AND JOHN MORRISON
113
viii
Contents
8 Language and Immigration
129
S U S A N F O R B E S M A RT I N
9 Global, National and Local Identities
147
M AG G I E A N N B OW E R S
PART III
Personal and Economic Security
157
10 Immigration and the Welfare State
159
ANDREW GEDDES
11 Migration: a Threat or an Asset to Health?
174
PETER POORE
12 Homeownership and the Integration of Immigrants in the United States
191
A N D R E W I . S C H O E N H O LT Z
13 Digestible Difference
217
SUSAN M. THOMPSON
14 Feeding the Festive City
238
J A N R AT H
PART IV
Conclusion Conclusions
255 257
ELSPETH GUILD
Index
271
List of Illustrations
5.1 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5
Fixing the Dimensionality of the Electoral Contest America’s Newest Immigrants Latin Americans and Asians Dominate Foreign-Born Immigrants are Concentrated New Settlement Areas Immigrants Live Mostly in Cities and Suburbs Homeownership Rates Tied to Citizenship Status, and Time in the United States Ethnic Food Store: Asian Mixed Business in Sydney’s Inner West Cultural Area in Cabramatta: Gates at the Cabramatta Mall Non-Christian Religious Buildings in Sydney’s West: Gallipoli Mosque, Auburn. Gardeners in the Community Garden, Waterloo Korean Food Festival, Campsie
88 192 192 193 193 194 200 220 223 225 231 233
List of Tables
5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6
Stocks of Immigrant Population Acquisition of Nationality 1989–1999 Summary Statistics for Regression Model–Australia Summary Statistics for Regression Model–France Determinants of One Nation Party Vote: Australian Federal Elections, 1998 Determinants of Front National Vote: French Legislative Elections, 1993
89 90 92 93 94 95
Notes on Contributors
Jacqueline Bhabha, a graduate of Oxford University, is the executive director of the University Committee on Human Rights Studies at Harvard University and a lecturer at Harvard Law School. From 1997 to 2001, she directed the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago. Prior to 1997, Ms. Bhabha was a practising human rights lawyer in London, and before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Her writing on issues of migration and asylum in Europe and the US include a co-authored book, Women’s Movement: Women Under Immigration, Nationality and Refugee Law (1994), and several articles including Get Back to Where You Once Belonged: Identity, Citizenship and Exclusion in Europe (1998), Inconsistent State Intervention and Separated Child Asylum Seekers (2001) and Internationalist Gatekeepers? The tension between asylum advocacy and human rights (2002) Harvard Human Rights Journal, vol. 15, 155–181. She is currently working on a book on Transnational Child Migration. She teaches international human rights and refugee law. Didier Bigo has been ‘maître de conférences des Universités’ at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) for the last ten years and a researcher associated with CERI/FNSP. He is also the director of the Center for Study of Conflict, which has grants from CNRS, CNL, Ministry of Defense, Interior and the EC Commission. He is a member of various advisory boards: IHESI, CPGN, CREC, and the editor of the quarterly journal Cultures & Conflits published by l’Harmattan and which will be published in English with Alternatives, Lynne Rienner. He has written many articles on the subject of the sociology of mobilisation and conflict, coercion and surveillance, and European policing as well as articles concerning epistemology in international relations. The main focus is the relationship between conflict, crime and security (external as well as internal) issues. Recent books and articles in English: ‘Migration and security issues’, in Giraudon, Virginie and Christian Joppke (eds), Controlling Migration in Europe; ‘Security(s) internal and external, the mobius ribbon’, in Albert, Jacobson, Lapid, Heisler and Kratochwil (eds), Identity, Borders and Orders; ‘When two become one, internal and external securitisations in Europe’, in Kelstrup,
Notes on Contributors
xi
Morton and Michael Willams (eds) International Relations and European Integration; ‘Liaison officers in Europe, new actors in the European security field’, in Shepticky (ed.), Issues in Transnational Policing; ‘Border Regimes and Security in an Enlarged European Community:Police Co-operation with CEECs: between trust and obligation’, Robert Schuman Center Paper, April 1999 to be published in Jan Zielonka, Europe Unbound; ‘Frontiers, identity and security in Europe, an agenda of research’, in collaboration with M. Anderson and Eberhart Bort, Journal of Boundaries Studies, 2, ‘Frontiers and security in Europe’, in Malcolm Anderson and Eberhard Bort (eds), The Frontiers of Europe. Maggie Ann Bowers has taught literatures in English at the Universitaire Instelling Antwerpen/University of Antwerp, Belgium for three years where she is a member of the Postcolonial Workgroup. She previously taught American and Post-colonial literatures in English whilst writing her Ph.D. at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. She specialises in issues of migration and multiculturalism in the cross-cultural fiction of Canada and the United States, with particular interest in such writing by women. She has published on the writing of the cosmopolitan Indian poet Suniti Namjoshi, on the relationship between magical realism and cross-cultural writing in the fiction of Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston and Leslie Marmon Silko (for Wasafiri, and forthcoming for World Literature Written in English, Rodopi/Cross-cultures) and has written guides on Canadian writers Margaret Atwood (British Institute and Universities of London in Paris) and Robert Kroetsch (The Lexicon of Contemporary Writers in English, Utrecht). She is the coeditor of a forthcoming bilingual collection of essays Convergences and Interferences on ‘newness’ in cross-cultural and post-colonial literature written in English and French (Rodopi). She is currently writing an undergraduate guide to magical realism and is carrying out a research project funded by the University of Antwerp comparing Asian Canadian and Asian American writing. Zrinka Bralo, a journalist from Sarajevo, has been a campaigner for refugee and human rights since she was exiled in 1993. In the past ten years she has been involved in refugee assistance and contributed to programmes, websites and publications on the issues of asylum and human rights. For her MSc at London School of Economic she conducted discourse analysis of the portrayal of refugees in the British press. At present she is Executive Director of the Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum in London and Co-Chair of the UK Asylum Rights Campaign. Andrew Geddes is senior lecturer in the School of Politics and Communication Studies at the University of Sheffield. Among his recent publications are Immigration and European Integration: Towards Fortress Europe; Immigration and Welfare: Challenging the Borders of the Welfare State (co-edited with Michael Bommes); The Politics of Belonging: Migrants and Minorities in Contemporary Europe (co-edited with Adrian Favell). He is currently a partner in an EU-funded research project analysing EU labour migration and a UK project on public attitudes towards asylum seekers.
xii
Notes on Contributors
Elspeth Guild is Professor of European Immigration Law at the University of Nijmegen, Netherlands. She is the author of Immigration Law in the European Community and numerous other publications. She is also a partner at the London law firm of Kingsley Napley. Morten Kjaerum graduated from University of Aarhus in 1984 with an LL.M. From 1984 until 1991 he headed the asylum department in the Danish Refugee Council. Since 1991 he has been the director general of the Danish Centre for Human Rights. He is an expert within the field of international human rights law and refugee law and has published extensively on these issues in Danish, Nordic and international journals. Furthermore, he has a global network due to his (1) membership of a number of local, regional and international organisations; (2) participation in human rights missions to a variety of trouble spots. Susan Forbes Martin serves as the Director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Dr Martin directs the Certificate Program in Refugee and Humanitarian Emergencies, open to Masters level students at the university, and is an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, where she teaches courses on refugee law and policy. A long-time expert on immigration and refugee policy, Dr Martin came to Georgetown University after having served as the Executive Director of the US Commission on Immigration Reform. During this period, she also served as US coordinator for the Binational Study on Migration between Mexico and the United States, a joint study with the Mexican government. Prior to joining the Commission’s staff, Dr Martin was the Director of Research and Programs at the Refugee Policy Group. She has taught at Brandeis University and the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her MA and Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and her BA in History from Douglass College, Rutgers University. In addition to her work in the United States, Dr Martin has conducted field-based research on refugee and migration issues in Mexico, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Thailand, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Serbia. She is the author of Refugee Women and numerous monographs and articles on immigration and refugee policy. She served as managing editor of World Migration Report: 2000. Jeannette Money is Associate Professor, at the Department of Political Science and Director of the International Relations Program at the University of California, Davis. Her research interests focus on all dimensions of migration policy in advanced, industrial countries and the manner in which political institutions funnel societal preferences into specific policy outcomes. Pertinent publications include: Fences and Neighbors. The Political Geography of Immigration Control; ‘New Citizens: Immigrant Electoral Participation and the Host Polity’ in Lydio F. Tomasi, ed., In Defense of the Alien; ‘Xenophobia and xenophilia:
Notes on Contributors
xiii
Pauline Hanson and the counterbalancing of electoral incentives in Australia’ People and Place 7: 3; ‘Human Rights Norms and Immigration Control’, Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, 3:2; ‘No Vacancy. The Political Geography of Immigration Control in Advanced, Market Economy Countries’, International Organization, 51:4 (Fall, 1997). John Morrison After graduating and working overseas, Mr Morrison became involved in refugee work at a community level within the UK in the late 1980s. In 1993, he became Deputy Coordinator of the Bosnian Temporary Protection Programme for the UK and a representative on the ICVA/ECRE Reference Group for the Former Yugoslavia. In 1996, Mr Morrison was awarded a Harkness Fellowship in Public Policy to the United States and undertook research on the public perception of migrants and refugees. In 1997, he returned to the UK and worked as an independent consultant in human rights and international refugee policy. Amongst his work between 1997–2000 was some of the first published analysis in Europe on the effects of anti-smuggling and trafficking initiatives were having on the right to asylum. He has also worked within the context of economic, social and cultural rights and the establishment of The Body Shop Human Rights Award in 2000. Mr Morrison currently speaks internationally on issues of migration, human rights and the role of the business sector. He has collaborated on several documentaries, including the major new Swedish TV series on ‘Fortress Europe’. Peter Poore has 28 years’ experience of health care delivery, development and management of health care systems in developing countries and has travelled extensively throughout the world. He now works independently from home. He qualified at St Bartholomew’s Hospital London in 1964. From 1983–2000 he was Health Adviser to Save the Children Fund UK responsible for coordinating policy and strategic development of the Fund’s work in the health sector in all of the countries where SCUK works. He was awarded an OBE in June 2001. Before joining Save the Children, he worked overseas in Ghana, Tanzania, and Papua New Guinea. He has written extensively on health care in poorer countries and his special interests include the quality of primary health care, health sector reform, refugee health care, reproductive health care, the Expanded Programme on Immunisation, and the impact of HIV/Aids on all aspects of health and social welfare. He has taught post-graduate and undergraduate students, doctors, nurses and paramedical staff in the UK, Tanzania, Ghana, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and Mexico. He has undertaken consultancies for many agencies including the Department for International Development (DFID) UK, The World Health Organisation, UNICEF, The World Bank, amongst others. He has been on
xiv Notes on Contributors the Council of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and is on the Board of several Non Government Organisations. Jan Rath (http://users.fmg.uva.nl/jrath) received his MA degree in cultural anthropology and urban studies and his PhD from the University of Utrecht and is currently Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES) at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author or editor of numerous articles, book chapters and reports on the sociology, politics and economics of post-migratory processes, including a special issue on ‘Immigrant Entrepreneurship’ of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (Vol. 27, No. 2, April 2001), the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research (Vol. 8, No. 1–2, 2002) and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (2002, Special issue on ‘Immigrant Entrepreneurship’ edited by J. Rath, R. Kloostoman & E. Razin, 2002). He also edited Immigrant Businesses: The Economic, Political and Social Environment (2000), Unravelling the Rag Trade: Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Seven World Cities (2002), Immigrant Entrepreneurs. Venturing Abroad in the Age of Globalization (2003), and Tourism, Ethnic Diversity & the City (Oxford: Routledge). Andrew I. Schoenholtz is the Director of Law and Policy Studies at the Georgetown University Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM), where he directs studies on a range of international migration matters, including the causes and potential responses to population movements, immigration and refugee law and policy, comparative migration, the integration of immigrants into their host societies, and the effects of international migration on social relations, economics, demographics, foreign policy and national security. He works closely with the Fannie Mae Foundation on identifying and analysing best practices whereby financial institutions – on their own or in combination with realtors, businesses, government actors and community-based organisations – have developed ways to overcome the major barriers to immigrant homeownership. He recently co-authored a handbook on such practices, Reaching the Immigrant Market: Creating Homeownership Opportunities for New Americans, available on the Fannie Mae Foundation website (www.fanniemaefoundation.org). Previously, he served as Deputy Director of the US Commission on Immigration Reform. As such, he directed the analysis of immigration policies and preparation of reports to Congress detailing Commission findings and recommendations. Dr Schoenholtz directed Commission fact-finding missions in Haiti, Cuba, Germany, Croatia and Bosnia to study root causes, refugee protection and long-term solutions to mass migration emergencies. He briefed Members of Congress and staff on policy issues related to refugees and immigrants, testified at public hearings, and represented the Commission at national conferences and symposia. Prior to his current position, Dr. Schoenholtz practiced immigration, human rights and international law with the Washington, DC law firm of Covington & Burling. Dr. Schoenholtz holds a JD from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. from Brown University.
Notes on Contributors
xv
Joanne van Selm is Senior Policy Analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington DC based think tank devoted to the study of international migration, where she focuses on issues of refugee protection, most particularly in Europe, and questions of migration management. Dr van Selm is also affiliated as an Associate Professor to the University of Amsterdam’s Department of Political Science and the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies at the same University. Dr van Selm is co-editor of Oxford University Press’ Journal of Refugee Studies, a leading multi-disciplinary journal with an academic and practitioner readership worldwide. She is also on the Executive Committee of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, for which she ran the Programme of its January 2001 conference on The Refugee Convention at 50 hosted in South Africa. Dr van Selm’s publications include the volumes Kosovo’s Refugees in the European Union (2000) and Refugee Protection in Europe: lessons of the Yugoslav Crisis (1998). She has also published some twenty articles and book chapters on global migration, European integration in asylum and migration affairs, Dutch politics and international refugee policies. Susan M. Thompson is a Senior Lecturer in the Planning and Urban Development Program within the Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of NSW, Sydney, Australia. She also holds the position of Presiding Member of Faculty. Her academic qualifications include an honours degree in geography and diploma of education from Macquarie University. She has a masters degree in town planning and a doctorate from the University of Sydney. Dr Thompson teaches social planning, local planning and qualitative research methods. She is particularly interested in developing innovative educational techniques to facilitate students’ understanding of difference and diversity in the city. Susan has several research interests including meanings of home for migrant women and those experiencing the loss of an intimate relationship, multiculturalism and its impact on the city, the implementation of multicultural policy at the local government level and the development of culturally inclusive planning education and practice. Prior to her present academic appointment, Susan worked for many years as a town planner in both state and local government. She continues to maintain strong links with the profession, something she considers vital in bringing relevance and currency to her teaching and research. Recent publications include ‘The local politics of difference’, in S. K. Phillips (ed.) Everyday Diversity: Australian Multiculturalism in Practice, (2001); ‘Breaking Through with Subjugated Knowledges: Pushing the boundaries of urban planning’, in H. Byrne-Armstrong, D. Horsfall and J. Higgs (eds) Critical Moments in Qualitative Research (2001); ‘Public participation in local government’, Geography Bulletin, (2001) 33(1): 25–29; ‘The institution of multiculturalism within local government in Australia’, Urban Studies, (2001); ‘Urban governance, multiculturalism and citizenship in Sydney and Vancouver’, in D. Ley and P. Murphy (eds) Immigration in Gateway Cities: Sydney and Vancouver in comparative perspective, Progress in Planning, (2001); ‘The local
xvi Notes on Contributors politics of difference: An examination of inter-communal relations policy in Australian local government’, Environment and Planning A: (2001); ‘Issues of difference and diversity in planning education: A reflection on current Australian and New Zealand practice’, (2002) Australian Planner, 39 (1): 30–36; ‘Meanings of Home: Developing a responsive and humane planning practice’, Plan Canada, 42 (1): 13–15.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following people, as well as the authors, without whose contributions this volume would not have been possible. Grace McInnes at Taylor and Francis whose patient emails kept us going, Fancy Sinantha at the Migration Policy Institute whose technical skills made diagrams come to life, and especially Hannie van de Put at the University of Nijmegen, who so kindly edited every chapter and made sure we were complete. We are also grateful to Celine Artal for her assistance during the latter stages of the editing process and to Bart Luijkx for his work on the index. We would also like to thank the European Commission for its financial support with respect to the programme Framework 6 CHALLENGE. Elspeth Guild and Joanne van Selm
Introduction Immigration: Opportunities and Challenges for the Developed World Joanne van Selm
Every day newspapers in the Western world carry articles about illegal immigrants, asylum seekers and other migrants. The focus of these articles varies greatly. Some see migrants as posing a challenge or a threat to one or another important social or societal interest. Other articles present migrants as bringing opportunities or assets to those same interests. This dichotomous portrayal, and its various consequences, have been more greatly emphasised since the events of 9/11. The tone is most often emotional – whichever way the focus goes. The overall impact is to confuse: is migration good or bad? One example of this is media presentations in the UK of migrants from the EU’s ten new member states as potential health tourists. The Daily Express, for example, in February 2004, portrayed this fear by describing the health service as the International Health Service (rather than the National Health Service [NHS]). In early March 2004, the Independent newspaper explained that in fact the NHS was only still operating because tens of thousands of immigrant nurses and orderlies were prepared to do the caring and sometimes dirty work that their British counterparts were shunning.1 Contradictions abound in the world of immigration. According to some portrayals it seems that half the world is on the move – but according to those who count movements for residence and work purposes, only some 3–5 per cent of the world’s population is in fact a migrant.2 Globalization and increased transportation links are seen as wonderful phenomena, because they give us all a chance to see the world, but also as quite dreadful because the result is that all those people seeking work will come to the West – and we don’t have room for them. To continue the example given above – coverage in the UK portrays many asylum seekers and immigrants as a threat to the welfare system, but following 9/11, the lack of US tourists was seen as a threat to the UK services industry. Low paid immigrant workers are accused of stealing jobs in the developed world and forcing the native population to also accept lower wages. Yet if companies move their production overseas, people still complain that the old industries are gone. All in all, the movement of persons across borders is perceived as an event susceptible to value judgement from a variety of perspectives. The various perspectives, without a strong analytical grounding, given by the media and politicians to the migration issue leave the public at large not knowing
2
Introduction
how best to react. All over Europe, for example, Kosovar Albanians were portrayed as bogus asylum seekers, criminally using smugglers to enter the rich EU states, until 24 March 1999. Then, for some three months, the Kosovars were portrayed as refugees in need of maximum protection – needing the full strength of NATO’s armed forces to make their province and lives safe again. The public astounded politicians in the welcome they extended to Kosovars – until the bombing stopped, and the Kosovars became smuggled illegal immigrants again, rather than the most genuine of evacuated refugees.3 In the average discussion on immigration, a person pondering the challenges migrants pose to values or facets of life he or she holds dear is quickly accused of racism and discrimination: those who emphasize the positive sides to migration are held to be soft and idealist. Often only limited knowledge of the background to various immigration situations, and differing forms of migration is available. The discussion often becomes polarized. This volume aims to bring information and analysis to the debate. In this book we investigate the value assessments regarding migrants in Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia in specific areas of life, such as the literature we read, the food we eat, the neighbourhoods we visit, the way we think of our own identity and the way regional security and politics impact our lives. What risks are perceived in these various spheres in relation to migration and migrants, what are the perceived benefits migrants and migration can bring to that same area? What is the distance between the perceptions of risk and benefit and how is this distance understood? To take the example of the labour market, and the US debate over NAFTA, migrants may be presented on the one hand as a threat to unemployed persons within a state because they are perceived as willing to take the available jobs at lower wages, on the other hand they may be presented as an indispensable asset to the economy as they enrich economic activities with skills and expertise which are perceived as in short supply in the state. In order to reflect on the convergences and disjunctions in thinking and justification for policy on migrants in the west, scholars from different disciplines have come together to write about the impact of immigration in their specialist field. Each scholar has been given a free hand to reflect and write on the question from the perspective of his or her work. No definitions of any of the key issues have been given to the authors: each author has been left free to talk about immigration, challenges, opportunities, threats and assets in the way they deem most appropriate for their own area of expertise. My co-editor, Elspeth Guild, turns to the issues to which this free hand approach has given rise in her Conclusions to the volume. The purpose of this book is to bring together under one cover the diverse perspectives and arguments for and against migrants from a critical analytical perspective. Questions and issues about immigrants tend to be sealed in the different disciplines upon which they impact without any overview of the arguments and perspectives of other areas. Thus issues about immigrants and health are rarely integrated into thinking about immigrants and language. Perspectives
Immigration: Opportunities and Challenges
3
on immigrants as a benefit in one field – such as the medium through which new ideas in culinary practices pass – rarely find space beside presentations of immigrants as risks in other areas. This book provides a thoughtful analysis by experts in different fields on the realities and myths about immigrants from the perspectives of both the opportunities and the challenges they present. This book is divided into three sections all of which posit ‘security’ as a central feature in how we think about migration. These are ‘Political and Legal Security’, ‘Cultural and Identity Security’, and ‘Personal and Economic Security’. Thinking about the challenges and opportunities, the threats and the benefits of a social phenomenon such as migration entails thinking about our sense of security and insecurity. Security is a contested concept – there are various definitions attributed to it – some of which are illustrated by the adjectives added in the section titles listed above. In the light of the free hand given to authors in defining their subject within their area of expertise, it is remarkable how the same types of issues emerge through the sections and across the chapters. How does migration impact the physical security of the countries and regions in which we live? How are our understandings of human rights impacted by the immigration and integration (or lack of integration) of newcomers who are noncitizens? What role can and do immigrants play in electoral processes in Western democracies? How do national and international laws impact immigrants, regulate their actions, and regulate the reactions of states and receiving societies? What is the likelihood that immigrants will be more criminal than, or pose terrorist threats to, receiving societies? These are the types of issues that arise in thinking about immigration in the context of political and legal security. The five chapters in the first section deal with regional security issues; legal systems; human rights; terrorism, and political participation. My own chapter addresses the ways in which states deal with migration when they connect it to their understanding of the security of their region. I look at three types of migration: that which takes place, and is encouraged, between countries in a region which is seeking integration for political and/or economic security purposes; the attempts which states within an integrated or integrating region make towards coordinating their policies on and approaches to people coming from outside that region; and the arrival of refugees and asylum seekers from conflict-type situations, which impacts the states involved in receiving them, for wider security reasons. The border is seen as the connecting feature in the ways in which states deal with these three types of migration. In particular the shifting notions of where the borders between ‘us’ and ‘them’ lie, and the shifting thinking on how interaction with those who would join ‘us’ should be constituted whether at the territorial border, or the pre-border situation of visa applications, for example. Jacqueline Bhabha investigates the ways in which immigration has changed states, and in particular, changed or impacted upon the legal systems of Western, industrialized states. She considers the ways in which not only immigration and asylum laws have changed over time to address new waves and forms of migration,
4
Introduction
but also how areas such as criminal law and family law have adapted and adjusted as their practice has had to address varying cultural backgrounds for people’s actions and interactions. Few migrants would consider the legal system in the country to which they are moving to be a factor in their choice to make that move. However, the ways in which societies regulate themselves through the development, exercise and interpretations of their laws are fundamental to the migrant experience. The central thesis of Bhabha’s chapter is that disputes about migration have played a crucial role in spreading human rights within Western legal systems. Morten Kjaerum, in the third chapter in this section explores some of the dilemmas that arise for governments and societies when the cultural practices of immigrants come into contact with the protections of fundamental human rights principles in Western states. He looks at three specific issues or cases: the barriers developed states have erected to limit access to asylum procedures; the practice of forced or arranged marriages among some immigrant populations and measures to limit or prevent those; and the wearing of religious symbols in public spaces, in particular state schools. Kjaerum discusses the need to both respect and protect in the context of human rights – and how on occasion respect for cultural or religious practices might clash with protection for an individual who does not want to participate in those practices, and has human rights which should, if respected, permit them to break from their society’s rules. In those cases, states may need to step in to protect the individual. Yet that protection could, if applied broadly, lead to further restrictions and potential violations of rights. Didier Bigo addresses the changes which the impact and aftermath of 9/11 have brought – or have not brought – to discourse concerning foreigners in the US and Europe. His key concern is with the portrayal and construction of (certain) foreigners as representing the ‘enemy’. Furthermore, he explores the ways in which surveillance technologies are being used and integrated across national borders to track ‘enemy aliens’. This foreign enemy has been ‘de-territorialized’. It is no longer a question of people of specific nationalities being considered the enemy in a time of war – or being suspected of activities such as spying because they carry a particular passport. Rather, individual identity, race, religion, ethnicity, have all become grounds on which suspicions are raised about those who are ‘foreign’. Jeannette Money presents path-breaking research into the impact of immigrant voting rights on Western democratic electoral politics. She assesses and compares the voting patterns in France and Australia to examine the ways in which parties of the extreme right have achieved electoral success and the extent to which immigrants’ access to voting rights has proved a counterbalance to the xenophobic, populist parties’ campaigns. The extent to which immigrants can vote, and provide such a counterbalance in electoral strength, is dependent on factors such as the size of the immigrant stock and the possibilities for naturalization. Her investigation and comparisons of the data show that immigrant enfranchisement can work to hold back xenophobic tendencies among political parties seeking voters.
Immigration: Opportunities and Challenges
5
In addressing ‘Cultural and Identity Security’ questions arise as to the nature of national identities, and the impact of immigrants on the way in which we think, legally and sociologically, about who we are as ‘nations’. The interplay of immigrants and their ‘host’ societies is frequently seen as giving rise to racism: what is the implication of racial or other types of discrimination for who we are and how we think of ourselves? Ways in which those people who were once ‘immigrants’ become part of our identities as new communities include the acquisition of language and the expression of their experiences in literature which can be read by and inspire everyone. My co-editor, Elspeth Guild, addresses the cultural and identity security aspects of immigration within the context of national identities. She looks at the ways in which the individual is defined and self-defining in the face of sovereignty and nationhood. Key concepts such as ‘nation’, ‘sovereignty’ and ‘identity’ are, she suggests, changing in their meanings and the balance of the three is changing in political, legal and cultural aspects of interaction, particularly in Europe. In the European context, as a new EU citizenship is forged, diversity is maintained through national citizenships. Yet diversity, in the form of non-integration of migrants, can be seen to be as much of a challenge as it is an opportunity. It is only through respect for, and acceptance of ‘difference’ that we can achieve security for identities and cultures. Zrinka Bralo and John Morrison examine the racism and xenophobia facing immigrants and refugees in a Europe in which right-wing political parties have achieved stunning electoral successes just at a time in which Europe’s demography implies a need to turn to some importation of labour. They plead for new leadership to address the real crisis into which an ill-informed public is being dragged, as the media and politicians portray refugees and immigrants in ways that fit neither with a diverse European identity, nor with a rights respecting European tradition. Susan Forbes Martin takes us back to the United States, and the historical process of language acquisition through the waves of immigration from Europe, Asia and Latin America. While the US has become multilingual in fact, English has remained the unifying, common language since thirteen colonies came together to form the country. Successive waves of immigration have brought new languages, and thus new potential challenges to the predominance of English. Yet acquisition of the common language has been seen as the major way in which immigrants, and their children, could take full advantage of the opportunities presented to them as a result of their migration. If there is any problem with language in the US, in fact, it could be the loss of the native language to second and third generations who become mono-lingual in the American tradition. Also focusing on the use of the English language, Maggie Bowers explores migrant literature. She considers the impact immigration has had on England, a country with a long literary history. This impact involves new cultural influences on ‘Englishness’ and language variations of multiple ‘Englishes’. Bowers then turns to the effects of immigration on the literature of a country with a
6
Introduction
developing cross-cultural literary tradition such as Canada with its ongoing multicultural debate. Finally, she examines the effects of departing migration on a country such as India with a long history of literary production and a strong notion of a national literature. Taking us through a multitude of migrant authors whose work has become popular and part of ‘mainstream’ literature, Bowers demonstrates how critics, publishing houses, universities and the general reading public are embracing migrant writing and rising to its challenges. Economic and personal security, the subject of our final section, may form the most central concerns for individuals who, as immigrants or members of the ‘host’ society interact within the context of wider community and national relations. How can immigrants become part of welfare states in Europe? Is it possible that immigration brings sickness and disease into our lives? Do immigrants change the nature of the housing market? How does immigration influence the culinary and restaurant culture of states? In what ways can immigrants create jobs and businesses, which provide for their own economic security, and spread awareness of culture and identities? Andrew Geddes sees over-stated competing views of the connections between immigration and the welfare state which seek somehow to balance openness to some forms of ‘wanted’ migration and closure towards other ‘unwanted’ forms. ‘Unwanted’ immigration is that of people who would or could be primarily recipients of welfare: ‘wanted’ migration that of healthy, skilled workers who are more likely to be net contributors to welfare systems. But, immigration takes on various forms – and so do welfare states. Thus, the links between the two are more complex than they are usually portrayed to be. In particular, the ways in which immigration and the welfare state intersect are not only, or even primarily, about costs and benefits. Rather, they are about the character of states and societies, and form fundamental political and social issues that need to be addressed in a more nuanced way than is currently the case. In thinking about personal security, health, and the challenges which the movement of people can pose through disease transmission, is a major concern of many people. Peter Poore sets out the real and imagined threats of disease transmission through migration, and also considers the benefits to health with migration can bring to those who move, those who stay behind, and those who receive immigrants. Andrew Schoenholtz addresses the issue of home ownership – a fundamental factor in the well-being of households, in their integration into societies and in the economic security of families. Looking at housing experiences in various countries, cities and environments for context, Schoenholtz investigates through data the case of Northwest Arkansas. Home ownership is a key component of the ‘American Dream’ – the success sought by all immigrants seeking opportunity in the US, and lending institutions among others are showing increasing interest in helping immigrants navigate the complexities of this process to ensure that the choices made enhance their economic stability in secure communities. Susan Thompson engages with food and eating as key expressions of diversity, focusing on the way in which multicultural cuisines claim space, both at
Immigration: Opportunities and Challenges
7
home and across the broader public arena. Drawing principally on examples from Sydney, Australia, Thompson investigates how ethnic restaurants and local food stores are viewed and used by broad populations. As a visible symbol of identity, culture and presence, these food stores and the smells and tastes they produce can be unifiers or sources of tension. The danger, suggests Thompson, is that multiculturalism will only be seen as interesting food and exciting restaurants. The challenge is to use food as a way of making space for cultural exchange and understanding, so that the restaurant, food store, kitchen and dining room become only enjoyable places where other, more difficult and controversial aspects of cultural difference can be brought to the table. Finally, Jan Rath examines the phenomenon of immigrant entrepreneurship in the tourism industry. Chinatowns, whether ‘authentic’ or ‘constructed’ have become big business for cities around the world, from New York to Amsterdam, San Francisco to Tokyo. Rath explores the opportunities which Chinatowns and immigrant tourist industries generally present to all immigrants, the ways in which the skilled and unskilled alike can find their place there, and the means through which such urban tourism, with a focus on immigration, is linked to the rapidly emerging informational economy. The cosmopolitan city, with its immigrant culture on show, is a magnet for ever more migration and movement around the world. These chapters aim to offer the reader the opportunity of a broad range of information about migration in a wide variety of contexts. The challenge to the authors, as well as to readers, is to establish for themselves what immigration really is, how it presents opportunities, or assets, and the ways in which it poses only challenges or threats. In concluding the volume, Elspeth Guild recaps the chapters, discussing the understanding of this subject that she draws out of this wealth of information.
Notes 1 ‘Here’s an immigration story you are unlikely to read in other newspapers, and don’t hear too often from the Government’, Independent, 2 March 2004. http://news. independent.co.uk/uk/health/story.jsp?story= 497010. 2 International Organization for Migration, World Migration 2002: Managing Migration, Challenges and Responses for People on the Move, Geneva: IOM, 2002. For further statistical information see also the Migration Information Source www.migrationinformation.org. 3 See Joanne van Selm (ed.), Kosovo’s Refugees in the European Union, London: Continuum, 2000.
Part I
Political and Legal Security
1
Immigration and Regional Security Joanne van Selm
Immigration is often described as one of globalization’s discontents.1 However, when it comes to the security-sphere, collaborating countries in fact often come to view some forms of migration with contentment. Migration as a discontent throws up images of massive movements of mostly poor people, chiefly in the direction of rich states. Certainly, some of this migration can cause nothing but discontentment: trafficking, exploitation and modern day slavery are outcomes to some migrations, which need to be tackled head on for the sake of the victims involved.2 Often overlooked in the face of tragedies such as those of women trafficked into prostitution or refugees forcibly expelled from their homelands is the fact that much of the migration documented by such bodies as the International Organization for Migration and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is in fact the migration of the reasonably well-off (or at least not the poorest in their country of origin) to states which might be richer than their own, but often within their region rather than on the other side of the globe.3 The pictures of smuggled migrants entering Europe, Australia and the US packed alongside tomatoes in trucks, or crushed on to leaking, near unseaworthy vessels, are powerful images of only a small number of all migrants. Even the images we see of refugees around the world represent but some 13 per cent of the world’s migrants. With the majority of migrations taking place within geo-political regions, and the majority being of a voluntary nature, the contentment outweighs the discontentment with migration’s impact on the world numerically if not in visibility. How migration relates to security issues is a many sided subject. In the build up to both wars in Iraq (in 1991 and 2003) states around the world became engaged in the evacuation of their nationals – migrants to the oil-rich Gulf States, either (chiefly from developed countries) working on the oil fields and in related industries or (chiefly from developing countries) working to service the lives of those making significant income from oil, as maids, nannies or working in the lower-paid ends of oil and petroleum production. The second war in Iraq in particular saw attention in the US drawn to the significant number of immigrants who were seeking, but had not yet received, citizenship through armed service in the US military.4 Harking back to centuries gone by in Europe, the US
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Political and Legal Security
fighting forces drew on the strength and willingness of non-nationals prepared to fight for the American cause (and their own cause of a dangerous, if speedy, route to citizenship). In this chapter, however, we are chiefly concerned with how immigration relates to some broader policy ideals of states engaged in cementing their regional peace and security. In the aftermath of two World Wars, as European states started to engage in the process that would lead to the European Union, the founders of the process stated in the Treaty of Rome that four freedoms should be achieved – one of which was freedom of movement between the member states for workers. Intra-European Union state migration, a goal that has led also to such phenomena as EU citizenship, is a part of the European integration project that can demonstrate that these once enemy nations are now truly in accord. The integration project, in the context of economic and political liberalism and of wider-spread globalization, focuses on the removal of borders, and the removal of any form of ‘problem’ at those borders, in a secure, peaceful and multinational space. Further discussion of this issue in the European, North American and Asian contexts will form the first section of this chapter. While movement across the EU’s internal borders has become easier for those wielding the common red passport, the states which promote this free movement have embarked on a path which is intended to lead them to a common policy for dealing with all those people who would wish to enter the Union from outside, and may wish to remain in this now peaceful region of the world. The development of a common asylum and immigration policy as a tool both for setting out an integrated identity of the policy-collaborating states, and as a way of clearly defining the boundaries between ‘them and us’ is the second relationship between migration and regional security with which this chapter will engage in the settings of Europe and North America. Finally, this chapter will address the issue of state engagements in conflicts where the exodus of refugees is perceived as having an impact on regional peace and security. Refugees, and those ‘irregular’ migrants who, whether because there are no other legitimate channels for migration or entry open to them, or out of any personal desire to ‘play’ the system, present themselves as in need of asylum when they are not in such need, are often seen as a challenge to the notion of security which has developed within the peaceful space which is the EU. In the European Union, one strand of the emerging common asylum system is an approach to the temporary protection of those people displaced by conflict and seeking safety in the EU, or evacuated to the EU member states for humanitarian reasons. This was the first decision made in the EU, prompted by the 1990s conflicts in the Balkans and the European reception of displaced persons in that context. Regional approach to the issue of refugee protection in North America and Africa are also assessed. This chapter will look at three forms of migration: •
Migration between countries in a region which is seeking integration for political and/or economic security purposes;
Immigration and Regional Security •
•
13
The coordination of policies on and approaches to immigration of people coming from outside that region – linked to the goal of free movement for people within the region; and The arrival of refugees and asylum seekers from conflict-type situations, which impacts the states involved in receiving them, for wider security reasons.
Attention will be paid to the ways in which these forms of migration are perceived of as strengthening or weakening regional security. In each case, migration is generally viewed differently – as a benefit to, or as a concern for, regional security. The question is why a single phenomenon – the movement of people across geo-political frontiers – can be viewed in so many different ways, dependent on who is moving, and to where. Common to all three areas of investigation in this chapter is the focus on the border, and the desire to see the impact of any border on activities that are viewed as positive (including some forms of migration) minimized. As the European Commission has put it, in looking at the border issues in a newly enlarged European Union: ‘… new opportunities brought by enlargement will be accompanied by new challenges: … efficient and secure border management will be essential both to protect our shared borders and to facilitate legitimate trade and passage’.5 In seeking freedom of movement within the EU, the member states are essentially seeking a borderless region. Their problem arises in our second locus of attention in this chapter – that the external border to the collection of states as a whole seems to need strengthening as a result of the absence of internal borders. Yet, the governments need to make common policies, not only because they are integrating politically, but also because from a practical perspective they do not want friction in movement at any border – within the Union or on entering the Union. At the border, people should have the right documents: if there is friction anywhere, it should, if policy-makers successfully make policies to deal with realities, be at embassies, where visas are issued. However, refugees (people without protection in a world of states) as well as people seeking to abuse or take advantage of (dependent on your perspective) a weak migration regime through irregular movement, arrive without documents at borders. The policy-maker’s usual intent is to let the needy and the needed enter, while judiciously upholding a system which is regulated and not a chaotic free-for-all.
Intra-regional Migration Many pro-EU politicians and commentators view intra-EU migration as something that should happen, and that will benefit and increase integration, forge a European identity, and increase economic prosperity. Yet, some see the migration of EU citizens as a threat, when they perceive job ‘stealing’ taking place, or migration for primarily tax and social security purposes. Likewise, the US is seeing increasing debate on the need to legalize or regularize more of the immigration from Mexico, while strengthening border controls facing new
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Political and Legal Security
immigrants, and Canada is entering a debate on how strong the need is to maintain the border between itself and the US. The process of discussion in North America resembles that which has taken place in the EU, for example, with a focus not only on the people involved in movement, but on the symbols of their movement including the safety of trucks they are driving, and the question of tax and health benefits. These same impulses are not (yet) present in Asia and Africa, although there are some comparable signals to be seen. The Treaty of Rome in 1957 first set out the goal of freedom of movement for workers between the new club of states known as the European Economic Community. Italy was keen to see family unity made possible for its emigrants in the other member states – and Germany and other northern states were keen to allow easy access for workers from the south. The continent of Europe, devastated by the Second World War, was largely reconstructed by migrant workers. These included Italians who found work in other European states and sent back money to their homeland, which in turn played a part in its reconstruction. The EEC was an economic forum: and workers were a factor of production. However, workers are also people – and have families, and make decisions about where to live (and work) based on an enormous range of very subjective factors, as well as the simple rationale of whether or not there is a good enough paying job and a nice enough life to be had. Over the years, a number of resolutions, measures and programmes have been agreed upon by the member states of the EEC. These agreements have impacted the rights, and entitlements of the citizens of one of those states who moved to another state for work, or to join immediate family members. Gradually the project of free movement for the people who work developed into what might have been the core of the idea of a united Europe in the minds of early integrationists. Citizens of the member states became citizens of the European Union with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. By 1997, five years after real residency rights accompanied by political rights across the Union became enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty, a Commission led by Simone Veil reported that only some 5.5 million people out of a total EU population nearing 350 million people had actually taken up these opportunities. That is 1.6 per cent of the EU’s citizens – a figure well below the percentage of people anywhere in the world who have migrated, the vast majority in the absence of any agreements between their country of origin and destination state, or of any rights and entitlements after moving. The vast majority of the few people who had migrated within the EU were either students or senior citizens. The latter were frequently seeking a place in the sun, at least for parts of the year. Students, meanwhile, had been encouraged to move between EU states to study for at least a few months and often for a full year, under the Erasmus and later Socrates schemes. While initially it was mainly people who were anyway studying for a language degree who participated in these programmes. By the mid-1990s, however, students had started to take up the opportunity of a ‘year abroad’ regardless of their field of study: and the dream of an emerging European identity, at least among this relative elite was starting to become a reality. (A reality
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15
which has even become the subject matter of popular independent films such as L’Auberge Espagnol in 2003:6 the experience is mainstream enough for filmmakers to believe that enough people will recognize it to bring a paying audience to the cinemas.) Whether consciously or not, students’ participation in these exchange programmes is forging a new form of European identity, or at least understanding between some citizens of the EU’s member states.7 Likewise, the gradual increase in professional mobility, with people working in one EU member state while officially residing in their member state of origin appears to be increasing, as does labour mobility, with construction workers, for example, going to where the work is, for periods of several weeks, then spending some time at home, before taking up another short-term contract in another member state. (Another famous popular exposé of this latter phenomenon came in the 1980s British TV series Auf Wiedersehen Pet.) No other region has seen such fully sanctioned and reciprocal migration. No other region has sought to really remove borders, making free movement a totally frictionless experience for citizens of participating states (although in some cases, local agreements may exist, facilitating movement for people in border communities). The North American Free Trade Agreement has instituted special visas for businesspersons to travel and work between Canada, the US and Mexico. However, these have nothing like the impact on actual relations between the peoples of the three countries that (often irregular in both cases) migration of Mexicans and Canadians to the US has had. Prior to 9/11,8 the US and Mexico had appeared to be very close to entering agreements which would have regularized the status of a massive number of Mexican immigrants in the US and created new legal channels for new migrations. These agreements collapsed, however, with renewed focus on (and tension surrounding) immigration and immigrants in the US, and as Mexico’s reactions to the events of that day were slow and not always viewed as supportive. Nonetheless, the impact of migration on the lives, and sense of common security of these three countries is tangible. It also gains some overtones of the European process of integration when one considers that a major reason for the creation of ‘smart border’ agreements between the US and its neighbours post-9/11 was the need to allow legal transport for business and commercial purposes to pass freely between the countries – and a perceived need for the development of trust expressed on paper through two-way agreements. The US–Canada Declaration and Action Plan for Creating a Secure and Smart Border (30 points) includes measures to secure the flow of people; secure the flow of goods; secure infrastructure and coordination and information sharing in the enforcement of those three objectives. A major focus is on measures to allow movement across the shared land border, in favour of what might be called ‘economic security’, and developing greater trust between the two countries and knowledge of who they each may be permitting to enter (there are also measures which could impact the way each country develops its own immigration policy, and these will be returned to in the next section). Measures that have proved to be successful include dedicated travel lanes for pre-approved low-risk travellers.9
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Political and Legal Security
However, a ‘smart border’ is still a border. The development of this secure and smart border between the US and Canada acknowledges the contents of globalization – and the need to facilitate the movement of goods and of labourers between countries. However, these countries have not gone so far as to see that full liberalization might benefit them – or be a path to a more secure future for them. Rather, the Action Plan indicates that there is not (yet?) sufficient trust between these neighbours to make the external border of one the external border of both. Instead, the suggestion is that ‘soft’ Canada might admit people the US does not want to see arriving in its territory – while in fact, the people the US does not want to admit (most specifically those with terrorist intent) are more likely to enter or have entered directly into the US by air from Europe, Asia, Africa or the Middle East. And the US is not developing ‘smart’ borders with those regions or countries within them, but remains reliant on its own visa issuance system and watch lists, using embassies as the point at which there is the opportunity to really spot who should be permitted to enter and who should not be given that access. In Asia, migration between the countries of ASEAN, for example, is not so much encouraged as recognized as occasionally economically useful: until there is a downturn, at which point the migrants are rejected and often expelled. The ASEAN countries have not gone so far as to develop regional migration agreements, and as yet, the need to protect one’s own nationals working in other south-east Asian states does not seem to have prompted any state to take open and direct action to seek recognition of the rights of migrants. Nonetheless, many Asian states are actively encouraging their nationals to emigrate, at least temporarily, in order to support the home economy through remittances. This is perhaps a start on the road towards a commensurate focus on immigration and immigrant rights at the other end of the movement. The driving forces behind attempts to encourage intra-regional migration seem to be threefold, all related to the question of borders and the requirement to see easy passage at the border point. Increased worker mobility, be it to deliver goods and services, or to integrate labour markets meaning more job opportunities and creation, are economic impulses towards government sanctioned, indeed government-encouraged, migration. This is evident not only in the EU but also in North American practices, and the facts of migration in Asia. The search, over time, for a common identity for a region at peace, which sees borderless integration of its economies and political systems as an important factor in maintaining that peace in the face of a violent history, makes socio-cultural impulses an important second driving force for Europe. This is less the case for North America and Asia – which do not have the same motives for seeking a common identity as such. The border areas between Mexico and the US and Canada and the US do see ever increasing commonality of features, however, these are not deliberately aimed at the development of a common identity of any sort. Finally, as is implied in the European’s search for some level of common identity, migration is facilitated between states with the goal of achieving regional peace and security. Again, this is primarily a feature in the European case due to the continent’s
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17
history: but lessons learned there may well be applied in other, currently war torn regions of the world at some future point. With migration seen as an economic, political and potentially cultural force for good at the regional level, as explained above, it is interesting to see how the same phenomenon is handled differently when it becomes broader in context. Part of the ‘Fortress’ mentality of regional cooperation seems to be that movement within is good – entry from outside is less good, and must be restricted to certain pre-determined modes.
Common Regional Policy While a region like the European Union establishes freedom to migrate for its citizens inside a border-free area, a flip side to that is that the same region might build itself up as a fortress to stop or at least limit immigration from outside. The very principle of building that fortress is open to question, of course. But even if one would accept the idea that a fortress of some sort might be necessary, it should only be impregnable to the threat – and not beat back the potential asset. Some immigration is necessary sometimes. Some European Union member states have seen a need to ‘import’ doctors, nurses, teachers and other skilled practitioners in the last decade. The big question becomes which bridges to build to allow the ‘assets’ to enter the fortress. Different states, with different interests, have different views: hence the need for regional discussion on a general policy framework. Those policies all seek to regulate the crossing of the border – so those permitted or desired to enter do so without significant difficulty. Once inside, their freedom to cross-internal inter-state frontiers is necessary for the good working of the regional organization’s frontier-free system as a whole. Meanwhile those who are not permitted to enter should be turned back at the border – or preferably not get that far. Discussions on a common system for dealing with immigration to the European Union have been underway for almost two decades, and are seen by many as the central plank of the integration process now EMU is made tangible by the advent of the Euro. Yet, others see this forging of European integration on the basis of a common approach to ‘foreigners’ as a threat to the sovereign ability to control and manage borders. In the North American case, there is less discussion of a common approach, but rather increasing cooperation on certain issues. For example, Mexico’s difficulties with in-migration from its south are compounded by the perception that many are seeking only to transit the country on the way to the US – and the Mexican authorities are receiving increasing assistance and instruction from US immigration and border patrol services. Another example is that of US concern about the smuggling of Chinese to Canada – and their relatively uncontrolled onward movement to the US, and in particular New York. The EU is handling the issue as a set of stepping-stones. There are several reasons from this, including the fact that policy-making does not go from nothing to a full-fledged policy over night. More importantly, member states have taken
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Political and Legal Security
their time to agree on what they need to agree on in this area – and on how they will seek agreement – and who will be involved. There has been a progression from informal consultations on immigration issues in the mid-1980s, to a statement of the need to harmonize in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, and the outline of a common approach, under communitarian rules, in the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam. Only the last step in this series, which came into effect in May 1999, has seen a strong and central role develop for the European Commission – until then all discussions were inter-governmental, and the vast majority of agreements only in ‘soft’ law. Even with a role for the Commission, at the time of writing unanimity remains the rule for voting on immigration issues. Part of the difficultly in this process is the perception of differing problems in different member states. The need to find a European level solution has to be there for states to agree to – or want to – throw their hat into this process. Hence, the UK has maintained an ‘opt in’ to the decision making on asylum and immigration under the Amsterdam Treaty, meaning it has to first say on each measure proposed whether or not it wishes to be part of the discussions – and whether it opts in or not depends largely on whether the UK government sees a European solution as ‘better’ than a national one on a given detail of immigration policy. Ireland has taken the same ‘opt in’ route – by virtue of its common passport area agreement with the UK it almost had to. Denmark, meanwhile, has totally opted out of decision-making in this area – primarily because the government does not want to be bound by EU laws on this subject, though it is happier to participate in purely political discussion and decisions. As the issues of concern differ also, agreements can be reached on some fine details – or very basic agreements on broader issues. It often seems that raising common barriers is easier than agreeing to common admissions. So, the subjects of irregular immigration, smuggling, the return of rejected asylum seekers and other irregular immigrants, return programmes for groups of refugees for whom the situation in their country of origin has changed, principles such as the ‘safe third country’ and ‘safe country of origin’ designations – excluding asylum seekers from full procedures etc are areas which seem to be prominent in discussion. In the post-9/11 world, the ability to focus on these issues has become only stronger – and the process has speeded up. Nonetheless, realities sometimes seem to be seeping through, and the need to look at more positive admission issues like economic immigration quota plans, and refugee resettlement are rising on the agenda.10 Finding ways to let people enter the EU legally is perhaps a natural flip side to the fact that measures to date have only imposed barriers. The more barriers there are to legal entry, the more people who enter are put in an irregular situation – because few of the barriers actually deter entry as such. People go to Europe because jobs, safety and a future seem more likely there than the places from which they come – be they arriving for economic or for protection purposes. The fact that their entry has been deemed ‘illegal’ serves to make the individuals a more noticeable ‘threat’. And indeed, an absence of legal entry routes inherently means that anyone who enters is unknown to authorities – and
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could be a terrorist, or a criminal, or carrying a contagious disease. If we do not check, we will not know – and if we only check in order to remove the person, it is too late. Fortunately, very few of those people who enter the EU in an ‘irregular’ way (i.e. without proper documentation and entry through recognized ports of entry or ‘illegally’ as some, erroneously, frame it) are there to do harm to anyone – most are there to find a safer or brighter future for themselves and their family. But, many face discrimination and poor treatment, because they are labelled ‘irregular immigrants’. Hence many of the discussions in Brussels focus on immigrant integration and anti-racism measures. On many migration issues, rhetorically at least, politicians across the EU regularly state their belief in ‘Europe-wide’ solutions. In particular, those issues which cause serious political debate at home (the overcrowding of reception facilities in the Netherlands in 1998; Sangatte and the arrival of record numbers of asylum seekers in the UK in 2002/2003) provoke the political statement from member state ministers that ‘we cannot do it alone: immigration and asylum are European issues’. However, those same ministers are the ones who cannot agree on a European approach when they meet with their counterparts in Brussels. Such statements pose the problem as being bigger than one that any country alone can face, rather than setting out any logical case for which immigration can best be handled collectively by states that are seeking political as well as economic integration. This approach suggests a strategic search for breathing space at home. By turning attention to the seeming inability of the EU to come up with an appropriate immigration and asylum policy, officials who should be developing appropriate national measures to more effectively deal with the issue of immigration believe they remove the spotlight from their own inadequate policies. However, the ‘it’s everyone’s problem’ approach to issues such as high numbers of irregular arrivals is demonstrated to be unconstructive when EU partners fail to see themselves as facing the same problem. There could genuinely be a need for an EU-wide immigration and asylum policy for several (non-exclusive) reasons: to further European integration; to recognise the fact that European integration has gone so far that without a common immigration and asylum policy the project will fail; to seek a more effective, efficient and appropriate approach to immigration and refugee protection for the sake of the immigrants and refugees. Or, indeed, the very basic reason highlighted in this chapter of acknowledging the fact of a single, common external border at which, if policy-making has been successful and appropriate, there should be a minimum of friction. If there really is such a need then a plan of action should surely be developed, as was previously the case for Economic and Monetary Union, for example. No other region has undertaken steps to approximate in any way the approaches of various states to immigration and asylum: but there is no other region in the world where desires for easy inter-state mobility have reached the extent they have in Europe. The levels of movement, and ease of that movement for those already residing legally in the various jurisdictions, deemed desirable by Europe’s leaders today demand high levels of trust for each other’s immigration
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systems and border controls. Trust in each other is a key issue: both because the issues on which trust is needed have to be identified and because that trust has to develop and be genuine for the project to work. The need for trust is the major reason for which the US and Canada signed the Smart Border Declaration in 2001. The measures included in that declaration built on those in previous agreements (e.g. the 1995 ‘Shared Accord on Our Border’ and the 1997 ‘Border Vision’ as well as the 1999 Canada–US Partnership Process). The US and Canada have common visa policies for 144 countries, and are now sharing information on arriving passengers. Many measures, such as ensuring refugees and asylum seeker applications to both countries are thoroughly screened for security risks, and information shared about claimants and creating compatible immigration databases indicate that some details of immigration approaches, if not the central policy issues of who can enter, how many can enter etc, are moving into the territory of a common ground. The measure which might push the US and Canada towards greater development of common policies as such could be the establishment of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) of each other as ‘safe third countries’. The MOU was originally unsuccessfully initiated by Canada in the mid-1990s. Canada is eager to have this agreement, because it is estimated that some 40 per cent of its recently increasing number of asylum applicants enter via the US. One could suggest that is quite a ‘European’ reason for seeking such an agreement. However, the US has been slow to finally sign the agreement, and advocates for refugee rights on both sides of the border have been very critical of the move. European experience with the Dublin Convention showed that little actual movement took place following claims of a ‘safe third country’ reason to return an asylum seeker to a partner-state for status determination.11 Both the Dublin Convention and its successor Dublin Regulation are quite different in substance from the Canada–US MOU, not least because the latter refers only to asylum claims lodged on the border between the two countries. However, courts become involved in cases related to the transfer of asylum seekers. The rulings of those courts can highlight the differences in law, policy and the application of international law. And those rulings can lead to more calls for collaboration in order for the basic agreement to be more effective.
Regional Refugee Crises and Handling of Them Both the Dublin Regulation and the Safe Third Country MOU are concerned with people who seek asylum, i.e. who request recognition of their status as refugees and consequent claim for protection. These are people who generally arrive spontaneously at the frontier of what they hope might be a safe state for them to live in. In doing so, they will often, almost by definition, not have the correct documents; as to approach authorities to request such documents in or close to their country of origin would be unsafe.12 In Europe, the handling of regional refugee crises in the 1990s has directly led to several of the steps taken towards both creating common measures on
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which protection of some people can be based, and developing mechanisms which effectively limit access to asylum procedures in the European Union member states. As states see an increasing need, in the face of globalization and its desirable aspects, to limit friction at the frontier, they see an increasing need to rely on one another to grant protection to refugees in the first state in which those individuals seek safety. Part of the theory is that refugee protection is a universally equal phenomenon: and that as Western democratic states have similar interests in economic prosperity and security, and have signed up to the same international instruments, they will grant protection in similar ways to those people who really need it. As such, states see a need to prevent ‘asylum shopping’ – the suggestion that some individuals may try to seek protection either in the state in which they believe they are most likely to be granted it, or in the state which is most generous in welfare benefits, for example, or in multiple states – playing the system to see which one offers the best deal. These assumptions about potential refugee behaviour undermine the very notion that protection is the same everywhere – and also demonstrate that governments seem to presume that asylum seekers generally are seeking a better life and not safety. The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees developed out of two Europe-focused refugee producing situations (Second World War and the Cold War). It also was drafted by a rather Euro-centric gathering of states, and with a Euro-centric view of the world and the nature of the relationship between individuals and states. The Convention effectively sought a mechanism by which states could understand and follow each other’s acceptance of individuals, who were no longer protected by a country of origin, as being at least temporarily under a host state’s protection. Refugee crises in the decades following 1951 were most often non-European in locus. However, the refugee crisis of greatest focus in the immediate post-Cold War era was also European. The disintegration of former Yugoslavia, and wars in Croatia, Bosnia and later Kosovo, drew European attention even as major displacements occurred in the Great Lakes region of Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere. There were two obvious reasons for this attention: the geo-political fact that refugees from a part of the wider continent of Europe were unlikely to seek protection in places other than Western Europe, and the fact that the major part of the displacements coincided with EU developments towards starting on a path towards a harmonized and later common immigration and asylum policy.13 The conflicts in the Balkans and what might be described as their ‘spillover’ effects in terms of refugee movements drew EU attention. The fact that the refugee movements might potentially have helped the conflicts to spread beyond Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, and in particular into Macedonia, also raised the displacements on the EU radar screen. In that sense, the reactive development of protection measures for those displaced by the Balkans conflicts saw another linkage between regional physical and military security and migration. Beyond the state or regional security concerns, populations and the media on the one hand, and politicians and analysts on the other were starting to see that individuals
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needed protection not just in the sense of a ‘guardian state’ within the anarchical world system, but also because as human beings they had rights, and were vulnerable to the violation of those rights. Some thirty-five to forty years on from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the fact that human beings are vulnerable actors with an intrinsic need for safety and security was starting to really come to mean something. That development has not gone all the way to real reactive and protective forces being established to guarantee ‘human security’, but the discussion, and some changes in policy and approach, is well under way.14 The extent of visible human suffering in the crisis in Bosnia and later in Kosovo was larger than had been the case for crisis involving non-European refugees during the Cold War. Government leaders therefore faced opposing forces. On the one hand the public wanted them to address humanitarian concerns. On the other hand, the same public was engaged in a discourse which, even in 1992, had asylum-seekers as generally abusing the systems of generous, rich welfare states. In the Bosnia case, the balancing act saw more exclusionary measures than inclusive ones, and the development of temporary protection. A lesser form of status than asylum or Convention protection, temporary protection was instituted in policy or law in different ways in most of the member states over the course of the early 1990s. As a way of avoiding the granting of ‘full asylum’ this development underscored EU states’ gradually hardening policies. The varied approaches also made clear that regional security concerns were not yet leading to a coordinated regional approach from scratch. By 1999, the granting of temporary protection to more than 50,000 Kosovars under the Humanitarian Evacuation Programme and others seemed almost generous. There was still hardly any coordination to speak of in the substance of the protection offered by the EU member states, but there was a semblance of method in the provision of places on the programme. At any rate, the Kosovar evacuations and relatively high level of return following the crisis led EU governments to agree their first piece of refugee protection related legislation in the form of the Temporary Protection Directive in 2002. Focused only on mass influx situations which affect one or more member state, this directive is clearly linking a collective protection approach to issues of regional security. As the Kosovo crisis amply illustrated, there is confusion about the benefits and problems of granting protection to displaced persons, made keener when the displacements are from a conflict that threatens in itself to disrupt the security of the whole region. The reaction of Europe as a region to that crisis, and indeed to the admission of refugees generally, becomes a matter of the characterization of the continent at some point. Most in Europe point to a humanitarian tradition, and a civilization based in democracy and human rights. As such, the protection of refugees is at heart a valued part of the European identity – hence the great tensions when policy-making in the newly frontier-free Union is making forever more tension on the wider external border of the whole.
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In the North American case, such examples come from the approach to the thorn in the side that is the Castro regime in Cuba, and the resettlement programmes of the US and Canada. While European states at one point feared that Slobodan Milosevic was virtually using the Kosovar refugees as a means of ‘attack’ on the wider region, Fidel Castro has certainly employed this approach in his stand off with the US. The Mariel Boat crisis of the 1980s and 1994 raft exodus both included people ‘permitted’ to leave by Castro – and others, including prisoners (political and others) and other ‘social misfits’ who were more or less put out to sea.15 The US response has been to open some clear humanitarian channels for exodus, but also to develop policies that seek to deter people from dangerous journeys. The so-called ‘wet feet/dry feet’ policy is intended to do the latter. If a Cuban is found, or declares themselves, on US soil, they are ‘paroled in’ to the US as permanent legal residents a year after their arrival. However, if they are intercepted at sea, they are taken to Guantanamo Bay for assessment of their case, and if they have no claim to refugee status, they are returned to Cuba proper.16 If they do have a claim for refugee status, they are resettled to countries other than the US. This same approach is taken to Haitians. The US facilitates their resettlement to other countries in the region and, occasionally, to Europe and Australia. Through the end of May 2002, 152 Cubans were resettled from Guantanamo to eleven different countries.17 If returned to Cuba these individuals, like all other Cubans, could get access to the US via an in-country resettlement processing scheme for 2000 refugees This is an example of the humanitarian channels for exodus. There is also the ‘Special Program for Cuban Migration’, more commonly known as the ‘Cuba Visa Lottery’, which was created in agreement with the Cuban government in the 1994 US-Cuba Migration Accord,18 the US committed to process at least 20,000 applications per year. Qualifiers do not receive a visa, but a ‘letter of transportation’ and must also receive an exit permit from the Cuban authorities. While the notion that Cuba poses a real regional threat to the security of the Americas is much diminished in the eyes of most if not all people, the fact is that migrations from the island do form a security issue in many ways, and a certain political hot potato in the US. However, no other country in the region has joined with the US in its general approach to Cuban refugees and exiles (though several have resettled Cubans from Guantanamo). Indeed, this approach to Cuban refugees has become virtually part of the US identity as the greatest opponent to communism worldwide, but particularly in the western hemisphere. The US and Canada both run significant refugee resettlement programmes, which also play a role in defining the characteristics of these countries. They are humanitarian in motivation (though erroneously perceived by many in Europe as being part of the immigration-country character of these two large states). The US can admit up to 70,000 refugees annually in its programme – with groups for selection being identified in part through analysis of foreign policy goals and domestic political lobbying, and in part through an analysis of the need of large groups of refugees and practicalities of setting up selection processes for the
24 Political and Legal Security identification of the individuals concerned.19 Canada has targets for 7,500 government-assisted refugees and some 4,000 privately sponsored refugees. Its programme differs from the US in both the exclusive individual referrals and selections (no groups) and in the possibility for private sponsorship of refugees. But the principle remains the same: these two countries, like Australia, Norway, New Zealand and six of the EU member states identify and organize the movement and arrival of some refugees each year. These programmes are seen as an expression of the humanitarian character of the destination states. They also remove the need for a small number of people in need of protection to arrive spontaneously, without correct entry documentation and with a need to enter laborious and challenging asylum procedures, and thus manage the bordercrossing element of their arrival in a smoother way. The combination of refugee movements with security issues are much more significant in Africa and Asia. The preamble to the 1969 OAU Convention notes that African States are aware ‘that refugee problems are a source of friction among many member states’, and that they wish to eliminate this source of discord.20 For this reason it is noted in Article 2.2: ‘The grant of asylum to refugees is a peaceful and humanitarian act and shall not be regarded as an unfriendly act by any member state’. The OAU states were aware in the late 1960s that militants and insurgents could easily hide among refugees, hence the Convention stipulates that they will seek to shelter refugees far from border regions – something which did not happen, with devastating effects, in the Great Lakes in the mid-1990s, as the focus had turned to being close to home in order to facilitate return. There is thus a regional mechanism for dealing with (especially large-scale) refugee crises in Africa, although this does not mean each country handles the refugee issue in precisely the same way, or that there are any efforts at coordination to the extent that a refugee in one country might be considered a refugee in another country – or should first seek protection in any specific ‘safe’ country. In Asia too, there is no regional coordination, and neither a regional agreement on refugee law of any sort, nor are there significant numbers of signatories to the international Convention and Protocol on refugee status.21 The security challenges of refugee camps in Pakistan, for example, where Afghan refugees languished for years, and from some of which the Taliban and associated groups emerged in the 1990s, are not dealt with in any regionally coordinated way. In the face of the largest refugee movements worldwide, countries such as Pakistan and Iran have not had the desire to create mechanisms for long-term acceptance of refugees, nor to turn to regional cooperation on this issue. Perhaps their internal security has seemed to be best served by quietly turning a blind eye to, or allowing (for some refugees at least and for some of the time) international agencies access to offer humanitarian assistance to refugees. The issue of refugee protection, as approached within a regional context, touches on regional identity, security, and border concerns. The EU member states see a regional approach as necessary in their border-free zone – but have not yet succeeded in removing the frictions from the entry process for those who
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need protection. This is one reason for which there is a strong focus on ‘Protected Entry Procedures’ and resettlement, as forms of managed, organized entry for asylum seekers (under PEPs) and refugees (through resettlement).22 Granting protection to those in need confirms the humanitarian identity of the European states – though the challenges including perceived abuse of the system (in part inspired by the absence of other immigration approaches as detailed under the second section of this chapter) mean that this identity is in fact being tarnished. The achievement of a mature refugee protection approach is particularly important in maintaining regional security, as evidenced both in the European approach to Kosovo, and in the OAU Convention.
Conclusion This chapter has demonstrated that there are occasions on which migration, and the creation of policies to deal with immigration, is seen as a positive issue by states. This is particularly the case for states that have increasing economic ties, and therefore advocates cross-border movements for economic purposes. At the extreme of manifest ‘contentment’ with migration, the European Union ‘project’ sees intra-EU mobility, for short or long periods, as a positive factor, which can potentially build a common identity. Relatively few individuals take up these opportunities, although the number and variety of forms of migration are increasing. Trust is another important reason for seeking agreements on migration issues, including cross border economic migration, visa policies and refugee protection policies. That trust is a matter both of having the confidence that your neighbour is not letting in people you would not admit (in the EU and North America) and the trust of each other that the acceptance of refugees is a humanitarian act and not a statement of political opposition (in the African context). In order find the positive in immigration policies, governments are looking to avoid friction on the border, and therefore to maximise the number of legal, problem free crossings, and minimize the number of undocumented, problem-posing crossings. Increasingly, governments are seeking policies to achieve these goals within the context of a border-free or ‘smart’ border area, where the sense of security, and potentially also of community, is increased inside a bordered location which is wider than just one state. We are far from a situation in which all migration can be seen as positive by receiving states and their populations – or as positive for the individual as migrant, given that the reasons for movement arise more often from discontentment (on prosperity or more serious safety grounds) rather than from happiness at future prospects. The life that greets many migrants in their new homes is often one filled with uncertainty and hostility from their new neighbours. Yet through their movement, as the EU has recognized in the case of intra-EU migration, these people contribute to the development of a globalized, multicultural and more integrated world. The fact remains, that whether migration is viewed with contentment or as a discontent depends on who is moving, where they are moving from and to, and who is watching them move.
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Notes 1 See e.g. Saskia Sassen, Globalization and its Discontents, New York: New Press, 1998. 2 Some migration through trafficking and smuggling occurs, however, precisely as a result of the absence of what should be a key element in globalization – namely the rethinking of (and removal of some) barriers to the movement of people, alongside the removal of barriers to the movement of goods and capital. 3 See the annual SOPEMI, Trends in International Migration Reports and IOM’s World Migration Report, from 2002 and 2003. 4 With just one year’s military service, a legally permanent resident alien can achieve US citizenship, whereas in civilian life they would need to be legal permanent residents for five years to be eligible to naturalize. The US media ran many stories about injured (often very severely injured) soldiers receiving the grant of citizenship from their hospital beds in recognition of the service rendered. Several non-citizen members of the armed services were also killed in combat or in the attacks of the months following the declaration of the end of major armed combat. 5 Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission: Paving the way for a New Neighbourhood Instrument, Brussels, 1 July 2003 COM(2003) 393 final, p. 4, para. 6 6 L’auberge Espagnole, directed by Cédric Klapisch, see http://www.marsfilms.com/site/ auberge/. 7 As a university lecturer teaching European Integration classes, it was surprising how often Socrates students from various EU member states would state their opposition to the EU, as if they did not realize that the Union as an integration project was the driving force behind their presence in a class in Amsterdam. 8 I.e. the events of 11 September 2001 – known as 9/11 in the US not only because its dating system makes that September 11th but also because 911 is the emergency number (like 110 in continental Europe and 999 in the UK). 9 Deborah Waller Meyers, ‘Does “smarter” lead to safer? An assessment of the Border Accords with Canada and Mexico’, MPI Insight, No. 2, June 2003. 10 See Joanne van Selm, Tamara Woroby, Erin Patrick and Monica Matts, Study on the feasibility of setting up Resettlement Schemes in the EU member states or at EU level against the background of the common European asylum system and the goal of a common asylum procedure, at http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/justice_home/ doc_centre/asylum/studies/docs/resettlement-study-full_2003_en.pdf. 11 Commission of the European Communities, Staff Working Paper, Evaluation of the Dublin Convention, Brussels, 13.06.2001, SEC(2001)756, just 1.7 per cent of all asylum seekers in EU member states were transferred to another member state in 1998–1999 as a result of the Dublin Convention. 12 Resettled refugees, and those who might benefit from a humanitarian entry visa prior to determination of their asylum case would differ from this in that they would have correct entry documents for easy admission on arrival. 13 Joanne van Selm-Thorburn and Bertjan Verbeek, ‘The Chance of a Lifetime? The European Community’s foreign and refugee policies towards the conflict in Yugoslavia, 1991–95’, in: Pat Gray and Paul ’t Hart (eds), Public Policy Disasters in Western Europe, London: Routledge, 1998. 14 See Edward Newman and Joanne van Selm (eds), Refugees and Forced Displacement: International Security, Human Vulnerability and the State, Tokyo: UNU Press, 2003. 15 See Norman L. Zucker and Naomi Flink Zucker, Desperate Crossings: seeking refuge in America, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. 16 Haitian asylum seekers are treated somewhat differently – with all ‘boat arrivals’ (except Cubans) being subject to detention on US soil. If intercepted at sea, and making a clear claim to need asylum and be in fear of persecution if returned to Haiti (known as the ‘shout test’), a Haitian is interviewed by an Asylum Corps officer. If their fear appears credible, they are, like Cubans, transferred to Guantanamo Bay
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for a full assessment of their claim. If the person is granted refugee status, a resettlement place is sought for them in a country other than the US. If the Haitian expresses no clear fear of persecution they are returned to Haiti by the Coast Guard without ever seeing an Asylum Officer. Proposed Refugee Admissions for FY 2003 – Report to the Congress, Released by the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, September 2002. Available online at: http://www.state.gov/g/prm/ refadm/rls/rpts/2002/13892.htm. Fact sheet August 2000: http://usembassy.state.gov/havana/wwwhacco.html. Ceilings have dropped since the end of the 1990s, and since 9/11 actual arrivals have fallen to 26,000 and 28,000 in FY2002 and FY2003 respectively. Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, 1001 UNTS 45, entered into force June 20, 1974. Preamble para 3. Supang Chantavanich on Asia in ‘Regional Approaches to Forced Migration’; Joanne van Selm, Khoti Kamanga, John Morrison, Aninia Nadig, Sanja Špoljar-Vr¿ina and Loes van Willigen (eds), The Refugee Convention at Fifty: a view from Forced Migration Studies, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2003. See Gregor Noll, Jessica Fagerlund and Fabrice Liebaut, Study on the feasibility of processing claims outside the EU against the background of the common European asylum system and the goal of a common asylum procedure, Brussels: European Commission, Directorate-General for Justice and Home Affairs, 2003, and the Study on the feasibility of setting up Resettlement Schemes, op. cit. These two studies were discussed at a seminar organized by the Italian Presidency in Rome in October 2003. The seminar was entitled ‘Towards More Orderly and Managed Entry in the EU of Persons in need of International Protection’.
2
Rights Spillovers The Impact of Migration on the Legal System of Western States Jacqueline Bhabha
‘… sometimes foreignness operates as an agent of (re)founding’.1
Introduction Migration is the exception rather than the rule in human behaviour. Less than 3 percent of the world’s population are international migrants.2 And yet, as this book attests, it has become a hot topic on which everyone has an opinion. In less than quarter of a century, heated discussion about the pros, cons and characteristics of migration has shifted dramatically from the specialist periphery of demography and law to centre stage. It has become an issue in electoral campaigns, political careers, media talk shows, tabloid headlines and editorials, even meetings of global business leaders at the Davos World Economic Forum. Migration has also become a key subject in the law. The central thesis of this chapter is that disputes about migration have played a crucial role in spreading human rights within Western legal systems. In other words dealing with migration issues has led to a ‘spillover’ of rights more broadly within our legal system. This is because legal challenges related to migration have necessarily raised issues of fundamental human rights – what distinguishes society’s debt to its citizens from society’s debt to human beings more generally? How can we justify protecting ‘our own’ but not innocent human beings within our midst, who by the accident of birth are exposed to horrendous atrocities or debilitating scarcity? What do we mean by democracy, the rule of law, respect for fundamental rights if we ration protection and liberties along national lines? In the process of addressing these questions, our lawyers, courts and judges have been forced to familiarise themselves with novel, rights related arguments stretching the boundaries of their knowledge and of the legal system’s tool kit. As part of the thesis that disputes related to migration have contributed to the entrenchment of human rights arguments within Western legal systems, this chapter will explore three broad claims: that migration has internationalised the concerns of the legal system of receiving states, importing new contents, new problems and topics; that it has globalised the responsibilities of Western legal systems by implicating Western states in the consequences of policies or conditions in other states; and that is has universalised the legal obligations assumed by
Rights Spillovers 29 states towards residents, denationalising democracy3 by rendering ‘citizenship’, narrowly conceived, an ever-more suspect category for welfare or benefits eligibility. In short, migration has contributed to the domestication of international human rights norms, a process with spillovers that extend pervasively throughout the legal system. Why is migration such a contentious topic? Why is there this concern and anxiety? According to some there is now an endemic ‘sense of crisis’ – an escalating anxiety about the ability of states to control their borders, protect the security of their citizens, safeguard indigenous standards of living and cultural norms.4 It is this sense of anxiety that generates the forceful pressure to frame the phenomenon of contemporary international migration in terms of a reductive, adversarially conceived dichotomy: are immigrants an asset or a threat? The book titles of several prominent commentators reflect this approach: George Borjas’s Friends or Strangers? 5 or Peter Brimelow’s Alien Nation6 are examples. Framing the issue in these terms, like many simplistic dichotomies, creates an illusion of clarity. It assumes that there are ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers to the following frequently asked questions: is migration a resource asset – for receiving states gaining new sources of (skilled/unskilled/youthful/entrepreneurial) labour and/or for sending states receiving new sources of foreign exchange through remittances? Is it a manpower threat – for receiving states whose domestic labour force face wage rate undercutting, and/or for sending states who confront the brain drain of their most highly skilled workers, citizens in whom extensive educational investments have been made? Is migration a source of cultural enrichment for receiving and sending states through the diffusion of multicultural behaviour and cosmopolitan values, and/or a source of cultural threat unsettling cherished values, coherent and homogeneous ethical and aesthetic codes, unified family structures, the hard won enlightenment principles of state neutrality and secularism?7 Adversaries frequently marshal their arguments along these lines, citing ‘data’ to corroborate their perspective on the broader political questions. In practice, this approach is anything but clarifying; it leads to a dead end. Someone’s asset is someone else’s threat – populations, even families, whether in the receiving or the sending countries, do not have uniform interests or aspirations; developments considered a threat to the country’s constitutional system by some are viewed by others as evidence of positive expansions of the scope of fundamental social protections.8 What is beneficial to parents or male family members may be anything but for children or female or elderly relatives. The same group may constitute an ‘asset’ to local gastronomy importing a new cuisine and a ‘threat’ to the public purse burdening already overcrowded inner city schools. The concepts of ‘asset’ and ‘threat’ need further specification. So does the term ‘immigrant’. It covers individuals with a plethora of different statuses vis-à-vis the country of residence – the only common element is the fact of not being, in some sense, ‘a native’, hardly a clarifying contrast. For immigrants may be citizens (if naturalised), they may be born in the country (if second generation), they may be documented or undocumented, short-term or long-term, they may be visitors,
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students, international business people or workers; they may be second generation long settled populations, they may be asylum seekers, refugees, entrepreneurs, seasonal workers, they may come from neighbouring countries or across the globe, they may intend to stay in the country of immigration indefinitely or return ‘home’ to retire, they may not understand the local language or it may be their mother tongue. They may thus be ‘foreigners’ or not, they may be ‘illegal’ or not, they may even be ‘non-nationals’ or not. Given this diversity, assessing the impact of ‘immigrants’ as a whole, is futile. This chapter will not evaluate the impact of migration on the legal system in terms of a unitary matrix crafted around the asset/threat dichotomy. Rather it will consider the multifaceted transformation of the legal system produced by migration.
The Institutional Impact of Immigration Immigration has radically transformed Western states. Many domestic institutions, including schools, the media, the academy, and NGOs, have been changed in the process. They have participated in, even initiated struggles over deportation, asylum, rights of family reunification as expert witnesses, advocates, activist reporters. They have collected signatures of children and parents protesting the removal of pupils, documented practices such as virginity testing of Asian fiancées seeking entry clearance9 or abusive and prolonged detention of traumatised asylum seekers,10 filed expert reports by medical practitioners, psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists. Immigration issues do not only relate to questions of migration or border crossing. The long-term presence of substantial communities of third country nationals and second generation immigrants within developed states has opened up a plethora of problems related to xenophobia and racism with related transformations in the political and intellectual landscape including the development of various forms of identity politics, anti-racist activism, post-colonial theorising. The transformation of developed states into immigrant countries has brought with it a multiculturalist wealth and explosion, with significant related debates on topics that range from ‘cultural defence’ strategies in criminal cases, to dress codes, language options or dietary choices in educational and penal institutions, to questions about the relationship between gender equality and religious freedom, to controversies over ‘oppressive’ cultural practices – the now familiar question of whether ‘multiculturalism is bad for women’.11 As a result of these debates, the simple equation of nationality and culture has been problematised, the essentialist assumption of homogeneity and uniformity within states has been challenged. Immigration and greater global mobility have stimulated critical thinking about diversity, and enlargement of the cultural sphere. Domestic protections have been creatively appropriated to generate new forms of legal relief, global institutions and norms have been invoked to sustain identities that transcend the boundaries of citizenship. But strictly legal entities have also been transformed because immigration issues in developed states have been increasingly judicialised over the last quarter century.
Rights Spillovers 31 It is not just that specialist immigration tribunals or courts, legal practitioners, journals, textbooks, conferences, courses, summer schools and institutes have multiplied exponentially. The salience of immigration issues in the society and therefore in the legal field more generally has forced a broader array of domestic institutions to address new problems. For ease of exposition, this transformation can be categorised under three headings. First, migration has impacted Western legal systems by compelling them to internationalise their outlook: distant harms occurring in other countries or continents can no longer be relegated to the sphere of foreign policy, overseas development or charitable aid; they internationalise the subject matter of administrative decisions and court proceedings by impacting directly on domestic responsibilities. Second, migration has led to Western legal systems globalising their expertise; lack of medical services in a poor developing country becomes a domestic issue about which courts take a view if the state is seeking to deport an immigrant in circumstances that are life threatening; the use of the death penalty in another state becomes a domestic issue if someone in the territory will be exposed to it on expulsion. Torture in a remote country becomes a domestic issue if the state is seeking to return an asylum seeker to that country – the host state cannot absolve itself of responsibility or invoke the sovereign state autonomy of the torturing state. Third, migration has resulted in Western legal systems being compelled to re-evaluate the meaning of citizenship and belonging: through their physical presence, immigrants concretise the universalist obligations set forth in international norms, particularly the post-Second World War edifice of international human rights. Who ‘belongs’ within a society, who is entitled to primary school education, to subsistence benefits, to emergency medical treatment? Is citizenship an appropriate criterion of inclusion, of should our very notion of citizenship be reconceived and complicated? The presence of immigrants, with a range of different legal statuses from undocumented, to illegal, to temporary to permanent has raised these fundamental questions in an urgent way. The subject matter and the obligations confronting domestic courts are thus transformed.
Internationalised Subject Matter: The Domestication of Foreign or Distant Harms A central problem of social policy is that general rules must be applied to the specifics of individual situations; it is when these general rules need to be enforced in particular circumstances that problems and challenges arise. Migration is a clear case in point. One of the most evident impacts of migration on the legal systems of Western states is the internationalisation of the subject matter of administrative and judicial decision-making. Many new fact pictures, not envisaged when the general rules were made, now fall to be decided in accordance with them. Migration does not only ‘contribute[s] to the internationalisation of local and domestic politics’.12 It also brings with it new legal circumstances, practices, problems. This has an impact on many different areas of law.
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Problems that appear to have remote origins take on a different type of immediacy through importation into the domestic sphere. The most obvious example of this process is the asylum system, where distant wrongs are the central subject matter around which the asylum seeker’s case revolves. The horrors of Taliban rule may be familiar as newspaper headlines or TV images, but they create a different impact when described in personal and concrete terms by applicants in domestic court proceedings: in the words of one of the Afghan refugees rescued at sea by the Norwegian freighter Tampa off the coast of Australia: You know well about the long time war and its tragic human consequences and you know about the genocide and massacres going on in our country and thousands of us innocent men, women and children were put in public graveyards … we have no way but to run out of our dear homeland to seek a peaceful asylum.13 Distinctive political or cultural practices, such as China’s coercive ‘one child’ population control policy,14 the use of particular forms of torture15 and the strict imposition of conservative Islamic dress codes by the revolutionary Iranian regime16 or the much cited practice of female circumcision17 provide other examples of internationalised subject matter imported into Western legal systems through asylum applications. These practices were surely not in the minds of the drafters of the 1951 Refugee Convention; yet they are now the subject of appeals by asylum seekers seeking protection from persecution in their home countries, exactly the general situation that the Refugee Convention was designed to address. But it is not just immigration or asylum law that is impacted by dramatically expanded, international subject matter. Unfamiliar or specialist cultural information is brought before a broad range of other domestic legal institutions to explain or contextualise novel conduct. A compelling example in the criminal justice system is the impact of displacement, marginalisation and racism on gang membership and criminal offending by juvenile immigrants.18 Family law has also intersected with issues relating, directly or indirectly, to migration. Intergenerational strife over customary practices such as forcibly arranged marriages is perhaps the most common such problem. Increasingly religious evidence justifying annulment of forced marriages under Islamic familial law is being introduced in Western courts. Over 100 such marriages have been annulled in Britain since the first annulment in Scotland in 1992, which concerned a 14-year-old Glaswegian sent to Pakistan to marry.19 The Oslo Red Cross International Centre has reported a 70 per cent increase in the number of requests by young people for help against forced or arranged marriages.20 Criminal prosecutions have also resulted from such conflicts.21 A French court arraigned as accomplices to rape the Malian parents of a 16 year-old girl married off to a stranger.22 Sometimes cultural differences are introduced by parties to legal proceedings to justify behaviour that would otherwise be clearly unacceptable. The clearest
Rights Spillovers 33 examples of this strategy are so-called ‘cultural defence’ cases, where defendants to criminal proceedings rely on cultural information and arguments to justify acquittal or a reduced sentence. Male violence towards Asian women has frequently been justified in these culturalist terms. The strategy relies on a simplistic caricature of ‘the culture of the community’. Thus in one case, two Korean men in Los Angeles were acquitted of raping a Korean woman because she had drunk heavily, and had accompanied them to various nightclubs. The defence lawyer presented his case in these terms: ‘It is very, very improper for a Korean girl in her culture to go to bars and drink and carry on with men alone. … So I was asking the jury to translate American party attitudes into Asian’;23 in another, a Chinese immigrant in New York who suspected his wife of adultery was sentenced to five years probation for smashing her skull with a claw hammer – an expert testified that: Where adultery takes place, this is considered an enormous stain, much more so than where we take this thing normally in the course of an event [sic]. To the Chinese, it’s a very serious matter. It reflects upon him as a person. It is a reflection upon his family. It is a reflection upon his ancestors and it is a reflection upon his prodigy. It’s a terrible stain. One to be avoided at all costs.24 The tensions generated by these conflicts have also concerned European legal systems. The extreme case of Fadime Sahindal, a Kurdish woman living in Sweden, killed by her father for refusing to accept an arranged marriage and leave her Swedish boyfriend, highlights conflicting public attitudes; as a newspaper letter writer commented: By coincidence, claims that the [British] home secretary is interfering with cultural traditions came on the day that you reported the case of an Asian man whose defence to the charge of stabbing his daughter to death is that his religion demands it.25 International custody disputes provide another example of the internationalisation of legal subject matter that results from migration. Child welfare agencies and family courts have to consider a range of different child rearing practices and family structures when adjudicating on these increasingly frequent cases.26 General policies thus come to be applied to quite novel fact pictures, forcing judges to entertain difficult value judgements. Families living across borders, children exposed to contrasting value systems, disputes arising from cultural differences all come before the courts. As a US Court of Appeal Circuit judge remarked in a case involving two Swedish born children of a dual citizen Swedish/US mother and Swedish/Iranian father who the mother wanted to remove from the family home in Sweden: Among the federal courts’ most difficult and heart-rending tasks is the decision under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International
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Sometimes the issues presented raise both family and immigration law questions: what would be the child custody or access consequences of the deportation of a parent, could multinational families be reasonably expected to relocate abroad, what implications for children’s rights do exclusionary immigration decisions have? An example of one such case is the European Court of Human Rights case of Berrehab, where the child rearing consequences of deportation of a Moroccan immigrant parent from the Netherlands, after his divorce ended his permission to remain, were considered in the context of the right to respect for family life under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.28 Other examples include Ahmut v the Netherlands, where the court had to consider the living arrangements of a Moroccan child in boarding school in Morocco, whose sole surviving parent was a Dutch national,29 and Sen v the Netherlands,30 where the possibility of family relocation to Turkey was investigated in relation to its possible impact on children of the family raised in the Netherlands. To summarise this section’s conclusions, migration has forced decision makers to familiarise themselves with a range of social and cultural issues that extend way beyond the original confines of the deciding state. Rules and human rights principles, formulated in the context of one set of concerns and problems, now have to be applied to a much broader range of issues. Complicated questions about the relationship between established laws and novel practices or customs have to be addressed. ‘Foreign’ harms or problems have thus become domesticated and in the process Western democracies are being progressively internationalised.
Globalised Responsibilities, Borderless Democracy But it is not just novel, international material that immigration has introduced into Western legal systems. As a result of the presence of immigrants and their recourse to domestic and international legal protections, Western systems have also been compelled to assume global responsibilities for situations arising outside their territories. Their obligations no longer end with their borders. From the point of view of Western states, this process has had several consequences. First, it has resulted in a remarkable geographical expansion of the impact of Western legal systems, broadening the scope of domestic human rights obligations to include protective responsibility for threats to human rights arising in foreign states. Thus, states are no longer just liable for harms they inflict on persons within their territories – they may also be implicated in harms for which they are not directly responsible and over which they have no obvious control. States can no longer argue that they are simply ‘involuntary intermediaries’ when they attempt to send aliens who are within their jurisdiction to countries where these aliens risk serious human rights violations; the laws are now holding
Rights Spillovers 35 deporting Western states directly responsible. Several cases concerning the use of the death penalty illustrate this creative expansion of domestic to global responsibility. In the case of Soering,31 a German national accused of double murder in the US who had fled from the US to the UK, the European Court of Human Rights held that it would constitute ‘torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’32 by the UK for him to be extradited from Britain to face the ‘death row phenomenon’ in the southern US state of Virginia. According to the human rights court, the fact that Britain had abolished the death penalty and had attempted (unsuccessfully) to pressure the US government to guarantee that Soering would not be placed on death row was not enough; these actions did not exonerate the UK government from ultimate responsibility for the treatment he would face if extradited. So the court decided that Britain could not simply deport Soering back to the US. Jurisprudence developed in Canada under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in respect of death penalty extraditions to the US points in a similar direction.33 Two other contexts in which the presence of immigrants has broadened the scope of domestic legal obligations extraterritorially are the health field and state responses to security threats. The remarkable case of D v UK 34 well illustrates how Western states’ protective responsibilities in the field of health care have become globalised through the process of migration. In that case a citizen of St Kitts, convicted of attempting to enter the UK with a substantial amount of cocaine, was due to be deported to his native country after serving his prison sentence in the UK. However, during his time in custody, it became apparent that D had HIV/AIDS (contracted before travelling to the UK), and that his life would be considerably shortened if he were forced to stop the treatment he was receiving in the UK and return, already seriously debilitated by the disease and in destitute circumstances, to his Caribbean country of origin, where no appropriate AIDS treatment would be available. The European Court of Human Rights held that deporting D in such circumstances would amount to inhuman and degrading treatment and would thus constitute a breach of the UK’s human rights obligations even though he had never been given permission to enter the UK, the UK had no responsibility for his having contracted the disease in the first place and the risks of inadequate treatment stemmed from factors over which the UK had no control. Similarly, in the case of states’ responses to terrorist threats, Western states have found themselves directly implicated in the law enforcement methods adopted by distant states, so that the risk of torture abroad is something for which Western states have been obliged to take responsibility. Indeed, it has become a serious fetter on their freedom to deport unwanted and/or potentially dangerous aliens. In the Canadian case of Suresh where the judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada was handed down after September 11, 2001, it was held that ‘barring exceptional circumstances, deportation to torture will generally violate the principles of fundamental justice protected by the [Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms]’.35 So a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee, who had been a member and fundraiser for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
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(LTTE), a ‘terrorist’ organisation in Sri Lanka, was protected from deportation from Canada because of the substantial risk of torture he would face if returned to the Sri Lankan authorities. Rejecting the lower court’s suggestion that Canada should be able to deport the man because it would only be acting as an ‘involuntary intermediary’ rather than an instigator of torture, the Supreme Court held: … the guarantee of fundamental justice applies even to deprivations of life, liberty or security effected by actors other than our government, if there is a sufficient causal connection between our government’s participation and the deprivation ultimately effected. (…) At least where Canada’s participation is a necessary precondition for the deprivation and where the deprivation is an entirely foreseeable consequence of Canada’s participation, the government does not avoid the guarantee of fundamental justice merely because the deprivation in question would be effected by someone else’s hand. (…) Without Canada’s participation there would be no risk of torture. Accordingly we cannot pretend that Canada is merely a passive participant.36 Second, the presence of immigrants and their involvement with Western states’ legal systems has profoundly democratised globalisation, extending its benefits and access to the advantages of a Western standard of living beyond wealthy and powerful global travellers such as corporate executives and privileged consumers of Western health or educational services. Also included are extremely deprived constituencies for whom the critical legal protections afforded would have been inaccessible, were it not for the fact of physical presence in Western states. The cases of two children who ended up in the US, from very different countries and home circumstances, serve as illustrations. In one case, a four-year old HIV positive Thai boy, son of a mentally ill father who committed suicide shortly after the boy was born and a drug addict mother working at a bar in Bangkok, was trafficked into the US by two adults who were using him as a decoy to smuggle a female prostitute into the country. A Los Angeles couple, acting as the child’s legal guardian, conducted a sustained legal battle to prevent the child being returned to Thailand – and eventually he was granted a special ‘T’ visa as a victim of a severe form of trafficking, enabling him to stay in the care of his court-appointed guardians.37 The fortuitous presence of this child in the US led to a dramatic reversal of fortune. In another case, a severely disabled orphan from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, with a deformed spinal chord, compressed bones and malfunctioning lungs, needing extensive surgery to prevent further bone collapse and premature death, was adopted by an American family from an orphanage where he received no education and ‘spent days sitting on a bed. Once he tried to pick flowers to place on the graves of other orphans who had died, but was beaten for damaging the gardens’. Now he is getting an education and appropriate medical care.38 The scope of rights protection has expanded to include new beneficiaries, brought within the relatively privileged sphere of Western democracies.
Rights Spillovers 37 Third, the presence of immigrants and their involvement with Western legal systems has been the stimulus for the creation of new legal doctrine with important spin-offs for domestic rights culture. Immigrants’ ‘claims making’ strategies have increasingly addressed issues that look beyond the nation-state and draw on universal notions of human rights.39 The development of legal guidelines dealing with issues of particular concern to immigrants, such as the gender guidelines for asylum applicants, produced following the lead of activist litigation and campaigning, in multiple different Western states, are an illustration of this process. Women fleeing gender specific persecution, such as rape, sexual assault, spousal violence may now benefit from refugee protection. These developments have fed back into human rights legal protections for women exposed to these harms.40 This globalisation of legal responsibility has had an impact on domestic legal systems. Complex examples are cases where the question of female circumcision (FC)41 has come before Western courts. This has occurred in a range of different legal contexts. In France, for example, parents and circumcisers have been criminalised, convicted of assaulting children when performing or organising the performance of the practice. Female circumcision has also arisen in the context of appeals against deportation and in asylum applications, where the fear of FC has been the basis for the claim to protection. Novel legal material has stimulated innovative reflection on the complex relationship between cultural traditions and universalist human rights norms and has had an impact on domestic law enforcement. A circumciser was sentenced to 8 years in prison in France for carrying out female circumcision on 48 girls aged between one month and 10 years. At her trial she commented: I’m a good Muslim and I ask those present here to forgive me if I’ve done wrong. Circumcision is a tradition in my country, and I didn’t know it was forbidden in France until I was arrested. (…) At some point one has to give up certain customs; I think I must stop now, though in Africa it’s our duty to help out. (…) I apologised to you because I’m accused of something, and it’s you who are accusing me, but to my mind I’ve done nothing wrong.42 These cases illustrate the tension between parental autonomy in child rearing and universalist notions of child protection: what is the appropriate role for the state in imposing sanctions on well-intentioned parents?43 Can behaviour that is not intended to ‘harm’ nevertheless constitute persecution and therefore give rise to a valid claim for refugee protection? A laudable desire to protect all young girls within the jurisdiction indiscriminately from painful and potentially harmful physical interventions has on occasion been exploited by the media to indulge in gratuitous demonisation of another’s culture, with the use of emotive terminology such a ‘barbaric’, ‘vile’ or ‘abhorrent’ practice. This response is then easily appropriated by those seeking to heighten hostility to foreigners, on the basis that they are ‘not like us’. The issue thus raises profound questions about the relationship of universal rights to tolerance and multiculturalism.44
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In the precedent setting US case of Kasinga, a young woman from the Tchamba-Kunsuntu tribe of Northern Togo, applied for asylum because she feared ‘imminent mutilation’ under tribal custom, at the hands of her aunt and husband, following forced polygamous marriage to the latter, if returned to Togo. In granting the application, the Board of Immigration Appeals held that ‘subjective’, ‘punitive’ or ‘malignant’ intent is not required for harm to constitute ‘persecution’ and that ‘FGM can be persecution’.45 As a result of this decision, a US Court of Appeal considering the appeal against deportation of a Nigerian mother of two US citizen girls who faced the prospect of circumcision in Nigeria, held that the mother’s deportation should be reconsidered because forcing the citizen children to accompany her would constitute ‘irreparable injury’. Normally a child’s US citizenship is insufficient to prevent the deportation of a custodial parent;46 the asylum decision in Kasinga had an impact on these (and possibly future) US citizen children.47 In France too it has been held that female circumcision can constitute persecution, the first case where nonstate persecution has given rise to a court decision in favour of refugee status. Another example of tension between dominant Western norms and cultural particularities, which has also had an impact on the rights of minority citizens, is the controversy over the Muslim custom of female veiling or use of a headscarf as practiced by school pupils or teachers. The opposition of Western governments (including Turkey) to the practice has been justified not by concern for the Muslim pupils’ or teachers’ well-being (the issue in the female circumcision cases). Rather the attack on headscarves has been defended in terms of the constitutional obligation to safeguard the secularism or neutrality of the state, an obligation which is in tension with the fundamental constitutional principle of freedom of religion. The issue has been litigated in France and Germany.48 Different arguments have been used. In France, where many schools have banned headscarves, the Conseil d’Etat, the French court of final instance in administrative matters, has ruled that wearing clothing clearly identifiable in terms of religious affiliation is not incompatible with the principle of secularism, provided this dress style does not constitute an act of ‘pressure, provocation, propaganda or proselytism’ and is not ‘of an ostentatious nature’ and provided it does not ‘interfere with the aims or mission of the public service’.49 As Claire Saas points out, neither of these provisos are transparent: are a crucifix necklace or a skullcap less ostentatious than a headscarf ? Presumably they are in a Catholic or Jewish neighbourhood, but not in a Muslim one. Similarly whether the wearing of a headscarf interferes with the aims of public service which include encouraging equality between genders depends on the view one takes of the headscarf – is it a product of female oppression and subjugation or a manifestation of feminine autonomy and choice? Recently, a row has erupted in France over the government’s insistence that Muslim women remove their headscarves for identity card photographs. Some feminist groups have, in my view misguidedly, allied themselves with these state initiatives, arguing that compulsory veiling, by definition, is a form of ‘women’s oppression’, as if there were an objective, universal mechanism for establishing this.50 But these justifications ring
Rights Spillovers 39 unconvincing when examined closely, and allegations by Muslim feminists that they constitute a new form of racism seem compelling. Take for example the justification provided by Jacques Myard, an MP from President Chirac’s party, who claimed that there was a ‘big difference between discretely wearing a cross, a hand of Fatima or Star of David round your neck’ and a headscarf which is ‘incompatible with the neutrality of the school and the French Republic’. Why is the necklace ‘discrete’ and the headscarf not, if both are equally visible? In Germany the compatibility of Muslim dress codes with employment as a state schoolteacher is still legally disputed and unresolved. Courts in different German regions (Länder) have given opposing judgments on the question, though all agree that wearing a headscarf comes within the ambit of the freedom of religion guaranteed by the constitution.51 One court has held that wearing the headscarf is inconsistent with the German constitutional principle of neutrality in religious matters and that this principle should take precedence over the opposing constitutional principle of religious freedom because the act of wearing a headscarf constituted ‘demonstrative’ religious behaviour which students would not be able to avoid encountering; if students or their parents objected to this behaviour, school authorities would be obliged to transfer the teacher to a district where no such objections were raised, and this transfer possibility meant that the teacher lacked the necessary ‘aptitude’ to be appointed; another court, by contrast, has held that the headscarf is not a religious symbol per se – rather it functions as an item of attire or an expression of religious belief in much the same way as wearing a crucifix necklace does. This court held that a teacher wearing a headscarf did not unacceptably limit the freedom of religion of parents or pupils, because the teacher should not be judged simply on the basis of her headscarf but rather in terms of ‘her personality as a whole’. According to this court any problems arising out of parental or student objections could be dealt with, organisationally, by the authorities. The issue is, at the time of this writing, before the German Federal Constitutional Court. The case before the court concerns a naturalised German woman of Afghan origin, trained and qualified to be a state school teacher, who wishes to wear a headscarf as an aspect of her identity; according to the teacher, who views the state’s refusal to appoint her as a ban on employment because of her religion, ‘I am just as against the oppression of women and inequality as any other German. If the headscarf were a political symbol I would be the first to take it off ’.52 However, the state’s education minister, defending the refusal to appoint the teacher, has argued that the headscarf is ‘understood as a symbol of the exclusion of women from civil and cultural society’ and that it violates the strict neutrality of public schools in religious issues; a prominent feminist has defended this government position because ‘the woman’s veil has been the flag of Islamic crusaders’. The embeddedness of cultural stereotypes and insularity is well illustrated by this discussion, as is the powerful impact that the presence of immigrants has on problematising our concepts of ‘neutrality’ and ‘freedom’. The impact of the presence of immigrants on the development of a legal framework affecting citizens has been particularly clear in the post 9/11 period,
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where enhanced national security concerns have led to a rapidly deteriorating human rights situation, despite much soul searching about the ‘new calculus of liberty and security’.53 National security measures have led to less rather than more protection. Here the spin offs appear to have been negative for the population as a whole, citizens and non-citizens, particularly in the United States and the UK. As Michael Posner, executive director of the prominent US group Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, put it: ‘Since September 11, the United States has lost something essential and defining: some of the cherished principles on which the country is founded have been eroded or disregarded’.54 A steadily enveloping ‘mantle of secrecy’ has spread across the US administration, leading to increasing disregard for transparency and accountability to the public. Government surveillance has increased dramatically, with greatly expanded powers of search and seizure without prior notice; the detention without charge or trial as ‘enemy combatants’ of almost 600 suspected collaborators of the Taliban or al Qaeda. All of these detainees are held incommunicado in military custody at Guantanamo Bay Camp Delta, without access to counsel, without judicial oversight and without the possibility of legal challenge. Immigrants have been particularly targeted for these harsh security measures. There is no defensible reason why this should be so, though many have argued in favour.55 As was pointed out in a recent (ultimately unsuccessful) challenge to the indefinite detention without charge in Britain of a group of immigrants suspected of being ‘international terrorists’ in the wake of 9/11, there is no necessary connection between involvement in international terrorism and alien status: ‘There are many British nationals already identified – mostly in detention abroad, who fall within the definition of ‘suspected international terrorists’.56 By contrast the US government has been over inclusive, even categorising several detained US citizens57 as ‘enemy combatants’ – an unprecedented development in US history. As David Cole has pointed out with respect to the US, immigrants have born the brunt of the oppressive developments: In the wake of September 11, citizens and their elected representatives have repeatedly chosen to sacrifice the liberties of non-citizens in furtherance of the citizenry’s purported security. Because non-citizens have no vote, and thus no direct voice in the democratic process, they are a particularly vulnerable minority. Since September 11, immigrants have been the targets of a massive preventive detention campaign conducted under unprecedented secrecy. Congress has enacted new laws that subject non-citizens to guilt by association, ideological exclusion and unilateral executive detention. And federal and local officials have engaged in ethnic profiling, treating immigrants as suspect based on little more that their Arab ethnicity or national origin.58 Very large numbers of immigrants have been required to register with the immigration authorities, and substantial numbers, up to a total of 1,182 as of
Rights Spillovers 41 5 November 2001,59 have been detained, denied access to basic due process protections and tried in proceedings closed to the public, the press and even family members. But citizens too have seen basic rights curtailed and a seepage of negative impacts on civil liberties from the immigrant to the citizen domain.60 As US Justice Brewer commented in the famous dissenting judgment in the Fong Yue Ting Chinese exclusion case in 1893, ‘if the power [to expel obnoxious [sic!] Chinese] exists, who shall say it will not be exercised tomorrow against other classes and other people?’61 To summarise the argument in this section, migration has compelled Western systems to assume global responsibilities for situations arising outside the national jurisdiction – the legal obligations of these states are less and less coterminous with their national borders. This has inevitably resulted in rights spillovers: a significant expansion of the impact of Western legal systems – on individuals facing criminal prosecutions, inadequate medical care or abusive state practices elsewhere; on individuals from a range of different socio-economic constituencies, who – were it not for the fact of migration – would have no access to the basic protections that are generally accorded residents of Western states; and finally migration has been a stimulus for the creation of new legal doctrine because of claims by or against immigrants which have an innovative impact of domestic legal systems – as a resolution of the tension between universalist ideals and cultural particularities, as an accommodation to national security demands. In the latter context, however, spillover for the domestic population (as for immigrants) has been largely negative.
Universalist Principles, Inclusionary Pressures The presence of immigrants in Western states has thus internationalised and globalised Western legal systems, contributing innovative material to legal proceedings, and extending the scope of Western laws to a much broader constituency than previously, bringing the consequences and risks of foreign state conduct within the purview of these systems. But, most dramatic of all possibly, is the transformation at the very heart of Western legal systems themselves – a shift from communitarian to universalist principles which has resulted in citizenship (if narrowly conceived as national citizenship62) no longer being self evidently acceptable as a legitimate criterion of discrimination. Thus, the longterm presence of immigrants, combined with the increasing salience of human rights norms, whether derived directly from domestic constitutional principles as in the US63 and Canada64 or indirectly from international treaties as in most European states,65 has led to a general ‘denationalisation of democracy’.66 Guarantees of rights protection to all persons, irrespective of status and by virtue of their common humanity, are increasingly considered central to states’ democratic self-image. Immigrants are to a considerable extent responsible for this critical import of universalist norms into Western legal systems: ‘migration is one of the most significant topics to generate references [to international courts]’.67 Thus, in less than half a century, we have witnessed a remarkable
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series of developments through which the exclusivist boundaries of national citizenship have been transcended in favour of a more inclusive, cosmopolitan notion of belonging and entitlement, what Christian Joppke describes as ‘the triumph of abstract moral over concrete communitarian obligations’.68 The increasing judicialisation of immigration matters69 has, whether as cause or effect, developed in tandem with this process of cosmopolitan expansion. By achieving a distinct status as ‘transnational citizens’,70 immigrants have changed the legal landscape of receiving states for all. An early example of this process is the well known US case of Plyler v Doe, where the Supreme Court held that the state of Texas had an obligation to provide a free education to all children, including the children of undocumented aliens, and not to treat them any differently from their citizen peers.71 This inclusionary approach has even on occasion been adopted to promote universal access to higher education: on 8 May 2003, the Illinois Senate approved a bill allowing undocumented immigrant students to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities (out of state or foreign tuition is usually double the amount of in-state tuition). As the director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights put it: Across the country, the climate since the attacks of September 11 has been one of fear and anger towards the stranger, and immigrants have suffered mightily in the backlash. … But today, Illinois reminds us that we are and always will be a nation of immigrants, built with the sweat and blood of immigrants of generations past and present.72 This neutralisation of differences, what Balibar describes as ‘equalisation’, has not been a linear or consistent process. For there is a tension between the particular protection afforded citizens by most domestic constitutions, on the one hand, and the guarantee of equality to every individual on the other. This tension has been particularly evident in the post 9/11 period. The UK Court of Appeal held that the definition of ‘international terrorist’ as necessarily alien was legitimate.73 The US Supreme Court has recently held, in Kim v Denmore, that mandatory detention without bail of a long settled lawful permanent resident awaiting deportation hearings at the end of his criminal sentence was constitutional. As the dissenting judges commented: [this decision] forgets over a century of precedent acknowledging the rights of permanent residents, including the basic liberty from physical confinement lying at the heart of due process.74 But even before these recent developments, popular resurgences of xenophobia and nativism have strained the inclusionary trend. Notable examples of this opposite tendency include the Proposition 187 developments in California which sought to prevent undocumented immigrants from receiving public social services, health care or education,75 the rise of far right-wing anti-immigrant
Rights Spillovers 43 political parties and leaders, including Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands76, Jörg Haider in Austria and Umberto Bossi in Italy, and the increase in criminal penalties for immigration-related offences and curtailment of eligibility to US welfare benefits for long-term lawful permanent residents ushered in by the Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act 1996. These trends challenge the conception of democracy as a progressive development of inclusionary rights and protections, a lowering of the threshold of entitlements to an everexpanding set of benefits and freedoms for all persons within the jurisdiction irrespective of status. Instead they reflect a vision of democracy as strict electoral accountability to majoritarian opinion, as executive responsiveness to popular (populist?) desires, exclusionary or otherwise, and most critically perhaps, they reflect a vision of democracy as the ability of the executive to impose its policy choices, however derived, on the other arms of government. On this view the power of judicial decisions implementing rights protections to overturn government policies and accord broader benefits to non-nationals than originally intended by the executive branch threatens the democratic project. The tension between the inclusive mandates of constitutional and international legal protections and the exclusivist pressures championed by populist leaders thus raises questions about the appropriate characterisation of the effect of immigrants’ legal activism on democracy itself. Is it an expansion of democracy to broaden the scope of welfare benefits and rights protections to include non-citizens on a broadly equal footing with citizens, what Yasemin Soysal has called the development of ‘postnational citizenship’?77 Or is the trumping of restrictive domestic political pressures (fuelled by electoral considerations) by inclusionary judgments (whether derived from international human rights78 or domestic constitutional law79) democratically problematic because it may be against the majority’s will, a paradox at the heart of the project of liberalism?80 Are democrats having it both ways – arguing in favour of accountability to majority will when that leads to inclusion and expansion of rights but arguing against it when it leads to exclusion or xenophobia? Or can one reconcile calls for participatory democracy with a commitment to responsible leadership and imposition of unpopular views if they accord with fundamental democratic principles? The answer ultimately depends on one’s conception of democracy and the nation-state, and the appropriate roles for and relationships between the different branches of government. To return to the example cited at the outset, is it an advance of the democratic project for the UK courts to insist that asylum seekers be granted welfare benefits rather than consigned to utter destitution as government legislation would have mandated: to quote UK High Court Justice Collins: ‘It would be surprising if the standards of the human rights convention were below those believed 200 years ago to be applicable as the law of humanity’.81 Or is it profoundly undemocratic for the wishes of the duly elected political representatives to be thwarted by an unelected (typically upper middle class white male Oxbridge educated) judiciary, who may be out of touch with popular sentiment and political realities? Is it a threat to democracy that ‘the judicial tail
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is wagging the legislative dog’?82 While there is no easy resolution to these questions, it is clear, to summarise the argument of this third section, that migration has contributed to a profound transformation in Western concepts of citizenship, of national identity and ultimately of who ‘belongs’ which cannot but have an enriching and rejuvenating effect on Western states as they transform themselves for the next century.
Conclusion The impact of immigration on Western legal systems has been dramatic. Unlike nationals of a state who may have no need for direct engagement with the law, long-term immigrant residents are forced into a relationship with the legal system of their country of residence, as a factor influencing the migration decision in the first place, and later as a requirement to legalise their entry or stay, or – by default if they do not – to avoid being removed or deported. Beyond the essential immigration aspects, immigrants’ non-citizen status may, as I have shown, intersect with the law in many other ways – because of religious or cultural beliefs impacting on family law and/or criminal proceedings, because of claims relating to education, welfare, health service eligibility. In the process of this interaction international material is brought within the legal system that compels it to expand its knowledge and understanding of human societies, to address new customs and practices. Moreover, the interaction between migrants and Western legal systems results in an expansion of the geographic scope of Western legal responsibility – legal globalisation one might call it. As migrants import their concerns and needs into Western states, so the latter are compelled to reconsider the extent of their responsibilities, to reassess the scope of universal ideals in the light of particular, novel fact pictures. In the process the relationship between citizen and non-citizen, and the question of membership within society is being reassessed. The ability to vote may be a cardinal aspect of citizenship, but so is the right to remain in the territory indefinitely – never to be deported. And yet, if non-citizens cannot be deported to face torture, or termination of their anti-retroviral drug treatment or female circumcision, then society must reassess its notion of who does and doesn’t belong within its midst. It is this process of reassessment that leads to what I have called ‘rights spillover’, a critical expansion and domestication of human rights norms within Western legal systems. In each case the legal system is a salient aspect of immigrants’ encounter with their new environment. As Peter Schuck has pointed out: ‘Few migrants know much about law and even fewer would point to law as a major factor in their migration decisions. Nevertheless, law influences those decisions at every turn’.83 As a result immigrants (and their advocates) have had to use creative legal strategies to fashion new protections for themselves out of existing legal doctrine and procedure, particularly as the latter is often ambiguous and open-ended.84 Their dual role as both outsiders to citizenship (in their status as non-nationals) and insiders to citizenship (in their access to territorially based rights)85 – well
Rights Spillovers 45 illustrated by the cases of Plyler v Doe, D v UK or In Re Kasinga cited above – has produced uncertainty and conflict which has resulted in a rich body of litigation, with valuable spillover effects for legal culture and society more broadly. In the course of this enforced engagement with the law, the concept of democracy has been necessarily pluralised, cosmopolitanised, brought into direct dialogue with rapidly changing and complex global world in which we all now live. Asset or threat? Certainly a central correlate of contemporary modernity. Written in July–August 2003
Notes 1 Bonnie Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, p. 3. 2 Frances Cairncross, ‘The Longest Journey: A Survey of Migration’, The Economist, 2 November 2002, p. 5. 3 Honig, op.cit., p. 102. 4 James F. Hollifield, ‘The Politics of International Migration: How Can We “Bring the State Back In”?’, in Caroline B. Brettell and James F. Hollifield (eds), Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines, New York and London: Routledge, 2000, p. 139. 5 George Borjas, Friends or Strangers: The Impact of Immigrants on the US Economy, New York: Basic Books, 1990. 6 Peter Brimelow, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, New York: Random House, 1995. 7 For a typology of theories analysing the impact of immigration on societies and states see Hollifield, op. cit., p. 163–164. 8 See contrasting responses of Home Secretary David Blunkett and Q.C. Anthony Lester to the High Court ruling by J. Collins, holding that the provisions removing access to welfare benefits for certain asylum seekers in the 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act violated international human rights; Richard Ford, ‘Asylum Judge made error in law, says Attorney General’, The Times, 4 March 2003. For an analogous debate about the constitutionality of regulations prohibiting asylum seekers from working or studying in South Africa, see Terry Bell, ‘A Small Victory for Labour Mobility’, Labour News Network, 21 November 2002. See also opposite views taken by two German Administrative courts in different Länder over the compatibility of Muslim headscarves worn by teachers with the secularism of the German state, Ulf Haubler, ‘Muslim Dress-codes in German State Schools’, 3 European Journal of Migration and Law, 2001, 457–474. 9 Jacqueline Bhabha and Sue Shutter, Women’s Movement: Women Under Immigration, Nationality and Refugee Law, Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books, 1994, pp. 111–113. 10 The sustained involvement of the American Bar Association in the campaign to transform the policies of the US government regarding detention of asylum seekers is an example; the role of NGOs, media and advocacy groups in bringing to light the case of Abas Amini, the Iranian refugee who had his eyes, mouth and ears sewed together and went on hunger strike in protest at the UK’s inept and unjust asylum policies is another, New York Times, 29 May 2003, A1. 11 Susan Muller Okin, Joshua Cohen, Matthew Howard and Martha Nussbaum (eds), Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. 12 Hollifield, op. cit., pp. 162–163. 13 Victoria Council for Civil Liberties Inc. v Minister for Immigration & Multicultural Affairs, 2001, F.C.R. 1297, para 28. 14 See the Canadian case Cheung v Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration) Federal Court of Appeals, 102 D.L.R. (1993) 4th, 214; the US case of Matter of G, BIA
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Political and Legal Security Interim Decision 3215, No. A-72761974 (1993) 8 December, which also contains a graphic description of the multimillion dollar Golden Venture smuggling operation which brought many Chinese asylum seekers including the applicant in this case to the US. Abas Amini v Secretary of State for the Home Department. See the UK case of Gilani v Secretary of State for the Home Department, Immigration Appeal Tribunal (1987) TH/9515/85(5216); and the US case of Fatin v INS, 12 F 3d. 1233 (3rd Cir. 1993) 1237. In Re Fauziya Kasinga, BIA Interim Decision 3278, 13 June 1996. Brendan McGarvery, ‘Trouble Hmong Us’, Philadelphia CityPaper.net, 1–7 August 2002; Jeff Gerritt and M.L. Elrick, ‘Gang experts say Hmong members stay close’, Detroit Free Press, 12 October 1999. Joanna Bale and Frances Gibb, ‘Girl Forced to marry at 16 wins annulment’, The Times, 24 April 2002. ‘Threat of forced marriages affecting more young people’, Norway Daily (Dagsavisen), No. 08/02, 13 January 2003. Don Terry, ‘Cultural Tradition and Law Collide in Middle America’, New York Times, 2 December 1996 at A10 (describing charges of assault and rape arising out of forced marriage of 13 and 14 year old sisters in Nebraska). David Jacobson, ‘Marriage: Arranged or Forced’, 10 Correspondence (Winter 2002/2003), p. 5. Myrna Oliver, ‘Immigrant Crimes: Cultural Defense – a Legal Tactic’, Los Angeles Times, 1 July 1988 cited in Letti Volpe, ‘(Mis)identifying Culture: Asian Women and the ‘Cultural Defense’, 17 Harvard Women’s Law Journal (1994) 57–101, p. 60. The People v Dong Lu Chen, No. 87–7774, N.Y.Sup.Cit Dec. 2, 1988, quoted in Volpe, ibid., at 69. Jacobson, op.cit., p. 6. See Judith O’Reilly, ‘Losing my boys in the name of fanaticism’, Sunday Times, 3 March 2002 (describing the abduction of three children from Britain by their Pakistani father). As international marriages increase, so do international parental abductions: in the US there were 775 abducted children living in foreign countries in the year 2000, nearly double the figure for the preceding year, Cindy Rodriguez, ‘A father’s international custody battle case shows difficulty of ending such fights’, Boston Globe, 23 January 2001. In Canada there were 387 parental abductions in 2001, of which over half involved children being taken abroad, Sidhartha Banerjee, ‘Kidnap Odyssey over: Legal battle in Pakistan worth effort’, The Gazette (Montreal), 5 October 2002. Danaipour v McLarey, No. 02 –1065, 02–1070 (CA 1st Cir. 3 April 2002). Berrehab v The Netherlands, Series A No. 138, Application No. 10730/84, 21 June 1988. Ahmut v The Netherlands, 73/1995/579/665. Affaire Sen v Pays-Bas, Application No. 31465/96, 21 December 2001. Soering v UK, 11 European Human Rights Reports (1989) 439. Contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. See Ng v Canada (holding that execution by death by asphyxiation in a gas chamber amounted to cruel punishment under Article 7 of the ICCPR), Human Rights Committee Communication No. 469/1991, 5 November 1993; and Kindler v Canada (by contrast holding that execution by lethal injection did not constitute a cruel method of execution and was not therefore a breach of Canada’s obligations under the Covenant), Human Rights Committee Communication No. 470/1991, 30 July 1993. D v UK, European Court of Human Rights Case Number 146/1996/767/964, 2 May 1997. Suresh v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) 2002 SCC 1, para 76. For similar conclusions affecting the UK see Chahal v UK (1996) 23 EHRR 413; and (post-
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36 37 38
39 40 41
42 43
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September 11) Secretary of State for Home Dept v Rehman (2001) UKHL 11 October 2001, 47. Suresh v Canada, para 54–55. Eric Lichtblau and Geoffrey Morgan, ‘Boy in Smuggling Case is given Visa’, Los Angeles Times, 13 May 2002. Nick Perry, ‘Too old to be an orphan, 19 year old with spinal disorder faces deportation’, Journal Reporter, 29 March 2003. These cases are not intended to suggest that transnational adoption is the best or most appropriate mechanism for addressing the gross deprivations facing children in developing countries (for a powerful critique of the exploitative aspects of transnational adoption see for example Ofelia CalcetasSantos, Rights of the Child: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, January 1999, E/CN.4/1999/71 para 54–64.). But they do illustrate the important redistributive role that Western legal systems can perform for particularly vulnerable groups of immigrants. Yasemin Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and postnational membership in Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 139. Deborah E. Anker, ‘Refugee Law, Gender and the Human Rights Paradigm’, 15 Harvard Human Rights Journal (2002), 134–154. This terminology is preferred to the more common but value-laden terms ‘female genital surgeries’, ‘female genital cutting’ or, most frequently used, ‘female genital mutilation’, often simply abbreviated as FGM. For an excellent discussion of the multiple meanings and reasons for the practice see Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf, ‘Virtuous Cuts: Female Genital Circumcision in an African Ontology’, 12.1 Differences, 2001, p. 112. Acacio Pereira, ‘Dozens face jail for female mutilation’, Le Monde (in the Manchester Guardian Weekly), 14 February 1999, p. 15. In France, though female circumcision became a crime in 1984, the first accused were only convicted and imprisoned in 1999 – at the first trial twenty three mothers and three fathers were charged as accomplices and sentenced to terms ranging from three years suspended to two years in prison; the principal circumciser was sentenced to 8 years in prison, Ruth Nabakwe, ‘Woman Sentenced to 8 Years in Jail for circumcising 50 girls’, Panafrican News Agency Daily Newswire, 17 February 1999. In a more recent case, where a couple were accused of having seven of their daughters excised between 1985 and 1989 and faced 15–20 years imprisonment, the jury and judges ‘said they opted for an appeasement verdict because the accused considered the matter a trial against their culture. The presiding judge spoke about a warning verdict, meaning that no more clemency should be expected in the future for culprits in similar cases’. Thomas Atenga, ‘Defendants in FGM suit get suspended sentences’, Panafrican News Agency Daily Newswire, 18 March 2002. Britain has also criminalised the practice with the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985, but there have been no prosecutions under the act because parents circumvent its provisions by taking girls abroad for circumcision, Vivienne Margan and Joe Churcher, ‘Daughters Taken Abroad to Evade Mutilation Ban’, Parliamentary News, 21 March 2003. Richard Shweder, “‘What About Female Genital Mutilation?” and Why Understanding Culture Matters in the First Place’, in Richard Shweder, Martha Minow and Hazel Rose (eds), Engaging Cultural Differences: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002, p. 216; for an excellent discussion of the issues in the Canadian context see Audrey Macklin, ‘The Double Edged Sword: Using the Criminal Law against FGM’, in Abusharraf (ed.), Female Circumcision: Multicultural Perspectives, forthcoming, Penn U Press. [hereafter Abusharaf (ed.)]. In re Fauziya Kasinga, Board of Immigration Appeals Interim Decision 3278, 13 June 1996, 9. For an interesting critique of the evidence presented on behalf of Kasinga in
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57 58 59 60 61 62
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Rights Spillovers 49 65 ‘Regarding immigration, the universal human-rights regime has put two major limits on state discretion: the right of asylum and the principle of racial nondiscrimination’, Christian Joppke, Immigration and the Nation State: The United States, Germany and Great Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 256. 66 Honig, op. cit., 102. 67 David Jacobsen and Galya Beharieh Ruffer, ‘Courts across Borders: The Implications of Judicial Agency for Human Rights and Democracy’, 25 Human Rights Quarterly, 2003, 83. Rather than a transformation of the nature of democratic states themselves, they characterise this development as a struggle over agency within democratic systems between different arms of government, between ‘the judicial arms’ which promote individual agency, and the executive or ‘state which seeks to promote republican national self-determination’, p. 74. 68 Christian Joppke, ‘Asylum and state sovereignty: A Comparison of the United States, Germany and Britain’, in C. Joppke (ed.), Challenge to the Nation State: Immigration in Western Europe and the United States, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 134. 69 Matthew Gibney, ‘The State of Asylum: democratization, judicialization and evolution of refugee policy in Europe’, 2001, Working Paper No. 50, New Issues in Refugee Research, www.unhcr.ch, p. 12. 70 Rainer Bauböck, Transnational Citizenship: Membership and Rights in International Migration, Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1994. 71 457 U.S. 202 (1982). This inclusionary approach contrasts with the recent controversial policy of the UK Government set out in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which provides that children of asylum seekers be given education in the asylum accommodation centres in which they are detained for up to six months, before being allowed to attend mainstream schools. 72 Rich Frederick, ‘Senate OKs in-state tuition bill: Legislation would make college cheaper for immigrants’, The State Journal-Register (Illinois), 8 May 2003. Of course this inclusionary process is neither uniform nor comprehensive. On the same day that the Illlinois legislative decision was reported, a news item detailed allegations that a Spanish headmistress in Madrid denied school dinners over a period of months to dozens of immigrant children, by freezing the applications by the children’s families for subsidised school meals: ‘Esperanza Granda, a Spanish teacher at the school, decided to blow the whistle in October after a 12 year old boy of North African origin, visibly undernourished, fainted in her arms. Using sign language and drawings to communicate with the group of around 20 foreign pupils, she discovered that they had been barred from the school canteen for months while their grant applications were being considered’, Agence France Press, ‘Spanish School denies immigrant children school dinners’, 8 May 2003. 73 A, X and Y and Others v Secretary of State for the Home Dept [2002] EWCA Civ 1502. 74 Denmore (INS) v Kim, No. 01–1491. 75 Peter H. Schuck, Citizens, Strangers and In-Betweens: Essays on Immigration and Citizenship, Boulder: Westview Press, 1998, 149–160. 76 Fortuyn was the founder of a new Dutch political party urging a complete ban on immigration, the most popular party in the Netherlands at the time of his assassination on 6 May 2002. 77 Soysal, op. cit. 78 David Jacobson, Rights across borders: Immigration and the decline of citizenship, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. 79 Christian Joppke, Immigration and the nation state: The United States, Germany and Great Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 80 Gibney, op. cit., p. 17; James Hollifield identifies a related but somewhat different paradox between the drive towards greater openness by international economic forces, such as trade and investment, but to greater closure by the logic of statehood and powerful domestic political forces, James F. Hollifield, Immigrants, Markets and
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Political and Legal Security States: The Political Economy of Postwar Europe, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992 p. 3–41. It can also be argued that the growing gap between universalist principles and the treatment of the most needy non-nationals whose rights claims are unenforced or unenforceable, vulnerable asylum seekers for example, corrodes the very heart of democratic values, see J. H. Carens, ‘The ethics of Refugee Policy: The problem of asylum in western states’, quoted in Matthew Gibney, op. cit., note 10. Alan Travis, ‘Blunkett to Fight Asylum Ruling: Plan to halve refugee intake in doubt after judge outlaws denial of welfare support in late claims cases’, The Guardian, 20 February 2003. Jacobson, op. cit., p. 13. Peter H. Schuck, ‘Law and the Study of Migration’, in Caroline B. Brettell and James F. Hollifield (eds), Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines, New York and London: Routledge, 2000, 189. Schuck, ibid., p. 191. Linda Bosniak, ‘Citizenship’, in Peter Cane and Mark Tushnet (eds), Oxford Handbook of Legal Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 199.
3
Human Rights for Immigrants and Immigrants for Human Rights Morten Kjaerum
Introduction Human rights and migrants have been closely linked for centuries. This new century seems to be no different from previous in this regard. Racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism and islamophobia are all words which any person living in Europe will recognize from the headlines of the newspapers. The marginalization of immigrants and the increasing xenophobia creates situations for immigrants where human rights are invoked as the last legal avenue. The question raised is whether governments are limiting the scope of human rights application parallel to human rights playing a renewed role in protecting immigrants. Linked to this question is the problem that some immigrants in European countries do not seem to share the human rights values developed for centuries particular in relation to respect for personal autonomy. This human rights deficit is in its own way challenging the human rights regime. At the outset in three specific cases this chapter will highlight some of the present day’s dilemmas in the interrelatedness between human rights protection of migrants and the development of human rights protection. Due to the increasing number of immigrants and asylum seekers, European governments have tightened immigration laws and strengthened control mechanisms in order to bring down the overall number of foreigners on their territories. With the strong focus on the fight against terrorism after 9/11, borders are more closed than ever. Thus, it has become increasingly difficult for the persecuted to seek asylum and to obtain protection in European countries. These policies have obtained renewed legitimacy and support through the fight against terrorism. However, the question of how to protect people in danger of persecution still remains to be addressed. Forced marriages of young immigrants in Europe with their cousins in the home countries of their parents is an everyday reality and nightmare for many well integrated Europeans. The pressure from parents, brothers, other family members and community leaders on the young girl or boy leads to frustration, fear, anger, resignation, and, in some cases, even suicide or murder. How can society create a framework, which ensures that a marriage is entered into of, the spouse’s own free will, without the government resorting to legislation which in itself is violating basic human rights?
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Should European classrooms be religiously disinfected to the extent where a Christian cross should be removed as well as the Jewish Kippah and the headscarf of the Muslim girl? In several European countries, the scarf worn by the Muslim girl has provoked a heated discussion as to what extent it is a right to wear this religious and cultural symbol. Young girls are fired from their work place and harassed in public places because of their headscarf. These and many more examples have one thing in common, namely that they all relate to the protection of fundamental human rights. The right to seek asylum should ensure access to a territory where the persecuted can apply for asylum; the young boy and girl have a right to marry a person of his or her own free choice; the right to family life should ensure the possibility for them to live together; and the freedom of religion should, to a wide extent, guarantee the right to wear religious symbols.
Human Rights and Migrants The interrelation between the treatment of immigrants and refugees and the development of human rights, as we know it today, is nothing but a continuation of a long historical development. A few key words in history underline this relationship: the Westphalian peace in 1648 which ended 30 years of religious wars and gross systematic violations of the dignity of different religious minorities; the slave trade which brought hundreds of thousand Africans as slaves to, in particular, the Americas; the Nansen passport which helped Russian refugees in the beginning of the twentieth century to find protection elsewhere; the Holocaust which is a particular gruesome history deeply influencing modern human rights perception; and, finally, the ethnic conflicts at the Balkans in the 1990s which led to the creation of the first war crimes tribunal since the Nurnberg trial and subsequent to the creation of the International Criminal Court. Since the sixteenth century, all of these historical events have shaped the constitutions and legislation of European and other states and have, ultimately, created the basis for the international human rights norms agreed upon after the Second World War. The atrocities committed in Europe and elsewhere illustrated that domestic legislation is not under all circumstances sufficient to protect the dignity of all human beings. This was the reason for lifting the constitutional rights from the national level and making them part of international law, i.e. thereby giving legitimacy to the expression of international concern when human rights are violated. It is necessary and legitimate for the international community to monitor and advise states on how they protect, respect and fulfil human rights of all individuals under their jurisdiction. A global consciousness had risen after the atrocities of the war, i.e. underscoring the Kantian categorical imperative that human beings cannot be seen merely as a means, but that they must always be seen as an end at the same time. It is at the core of human rights to protect the dignity of every human being in his or her relations with the state. In particular, three cross-cutting features
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exist: integrity, autonomy and identity. The only way in which the individual can develop is if his or her physical and mental integrity is respected. All people should have a sphere of privacy where they can reign in their own kingdom without any undue interference. All human beings should be granted personal autonomy to take charge of their own life in relation to language, culture, spouse, etc. Finally, any person should have the possibility of developing his or her own identity by exploring different religious and philosophical beliefs, and of getting an education in order to capacitate him or herself to mentally develop and build up a unique personal identity. These important prerequisites for the well-being of any person should be respected in a fair balance with the same rights of other fellow human beings. All this found its way to the main international conventions based on the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR). The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was the first convention to be adopted. It is symptomatic for the linkage between migrants and ethnic minorities and human rights that the two subsequent conventions to be adopted were the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) and the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) (1965). In the following year, the two general Covenants on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) were adopted. As a follow-up to the fight against discrimination against vulnerable groups states adopted in 1979 the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). In 1984, the UDHR prohibition against torture was developed in the Convention against Torture (CAT). In 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was adopted. Finally, in 1990 the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (ICPRMWF) was adopted as the latest international human rights instrument and entered into force in 2003. It took 13 years from the adoption of the Convention until a sufficient number of states had ratified it. This body of international law is supplemented by regional human rights mechanisms such as the European Convention on Human Rights (1950), the American Convention on Human Rights (1969) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981). The strength of the regional conventions is that they have ordinary courts as implementing mechanisms, i.e. contrary to the weaker committee system linked to most of the international UN conventions. Whereas rights enshrined in national constitutions are often limited to citizens, the international and regional human rights conventions are universal in the sense that they protect all people under the jurisdiction of the State Party, unless it is explicitly laid down that a particular right is granted to citizens only. Thus, the framework of international human rights norms is often more accessible to non-citizens than are national constitutions when national secondary legislation fails to protect the immigrant or refugee.
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Integrity and the Right to Seek Protection from Persecution Integrity is the invisible sphere that each human being creates around him or herself for one’s physical and mental well-being. Though this sphere differs from person to person and from culture to culture, torture is, none the less, the most dramatic disrespect of the integrity of a person, i.e. whether this is physical or mental. Consequently, the prohibition against torture is considered a nonderogable human right. Since the creation of Amnesty International in 1961, the international community has paid more and more attention to the fight against torture around the world. Closely linked to the prohibition against torture are the prohibition against arbitrary detention and the right to a fair trial. With the adoption of the UN Convention on the Prevention of Torture in 1984, it was established that no person should be expelled, returned or extradited to a state where there are substantial grounds for believing that he or she would be in danger of being subjected to torture. This prohibition is in line with the broad definition of a refugee in the 1951 Refugee Convention, which more specifically lays down the term refugee as ‘a person who is seeking protection owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion’. The US, Canada and European states were instrumental in establishing the international norms, and they also took the lead in their implementation. New trends in the international migration and refugee pattern have, however, changed this picture in recent years. The mid-1980s saw a sharp increase in the number of asylum seekers arriving spontaneously in European capitals and in North America. This influx was primarily caused by an increase in armed conflicts in the Middle East, Sri Lanka and different parts of Africa, combined with a decreasing commitment to solve the refugee situations stemming from these conflicts through the international machinery. Thus, for many people the only option was to find the path to protection on their own. After the end of the cold war, the conflict scenario continued with the conflicts in the Balkan countries, the Gulf war, ethnic conflicts in Somalia and Rwanda, etc. They all created vast numbers of people in need of protection. Parallel to these developments, globalization made it an option to move far away to look for jobs and new opportunities not present in the country of origin. This created a new influx of people into Europe and North America. These developments initiated new policies. Western European countries, the US and Canada introduced a non-arrival or non-entry policy in order to create barriers for the new influx of asylum seekers and economic migrants. In the first period starting in the late 1980s these policies were developed with a multifaceted approach: visa requirements combined with carrier sanctions; creation of international zones in airports; isolation of applicants and processing of applications for asylum at military bases abroad (the United States in the case of the Haitians at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba); and safety zones within the home country where individuals received international assistance and protection.
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Often, these policies were combined in various ways to suit the specific situation. In Western Europe, the implementation of non-arrival policies led to a dramatic decrease in the aggregate number of asylum seekers: from 692,685 in 1992 to approximately 300,000 in 2003. The next step in the implementation of these policies was the posting of immigration officers or airline liaison officers in either countries of origin of asylum seekers or important transit countries such as Pakistan and Turkey. The immigration officers are supposed to assist the officers who carry out checks on departures locally on behalf of the local authorities or on behalf of the airlines. The primary aims are to detect false travel documents and to train local staff. An inspection of the operational manuals used by airline liaison officers, as well as government reports on their activities, shows no reference to possible refugee protection issues or other human rights concerns. Rather, the focus is on blanket border control against irregular migration and information gathering to support strategic anti-trafficking measures. The neglect of refugee protection and human rights issues has undoubtedly led to refoulement and to people ending up in the prison cells and torture chambers that they either tried to avoid or were fleeing from. These arguments have had very little impact in the overall policy-making in the period from the late 1980s till 2000 during which these strategies were developed and implemented. Since the terror attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, the policies have been tightened considerably. Today, American authorities and, partly, their European counterparts request detailed personal information about all airline passengers, documents are scrutinized carefully and a no-risk policy is the order of the day. All this adds up to a situation that makes it very difficult to use international flights as a means to find protection. Similarly, security measures are increasingly being developed in relation to sea transport. The fight against terrorism has a particular focus on people with an Arabic background or Muslims as security threats. As a follow-up to the war in Afghanistan, the American government created a detention facility in Guantanamo for prisoners of war or named illegal combatants by the American authorities. According to the sparse information about the prisoners they are all Muslims. The particular feature of these prisoners is that no charges have been made against them after two years of imprisonment, nor do basic human rights or humanitarian law standards in relation to fair trial seem to be observed. An unknown number of people are, according to different sources held, in similar or worse situations in detention camps in Afghanistan. According to Amnesty International and other sources, people with an Arabic background have been detained in the US and some of them have been escorted to countries in the Middle East, e.g. Syria, for interrogation. Observers claim that these prisoners are in reality escorted to torture facilities. Finally, in the light of the war against terrorism the extradition rules have been made less strict in most Western countries. In particular, it has been made possible to extradite citizens to prosecution in other countries for certain crimes. A discussion has taken place across the Atlantic as to whether a person can be extradited to a country where the death
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penalty is likely to be applied against him or her. So far European governments have rejected this possibility as well as extradition to countries where the person in question runs the risk of being tortured. However, in a number of countries, including Denmark, this is not explicitly mentioned in the relevant laws. On a positive note it should be mentioned that the Canadian government tightened the anti-terror and the anti-racism legislation simultaneously. There was an understanding that the fight against terrorism could lead to increased racism and xenophobia, in particular, towards people with a Middle Eastern background and Muslims. The Canadian government wanted to counteract such a development. The strategies developed in relation to border control, carrier sanctions, extradition procedures, etc. have been easy to apply and develop further in relation to the fight against terrorism. The structures, both domestically and at regional and international levels, were to a large extent in place. This linkage between the restrictive asylum and refugee policies and the xenophobic and islamophobic tendencies may also have served as a tool in the fight against terrorism to achieve a broad acceptance of restrictive criminal procedures and policies such as exemplified by the Guantanamo naval base. The measures have become broadly accepted as long as there is an underlying understanding that the target groups are mainly Muslims and people from the Middle East. Any individual has a legitimate interest in being protected against terrorism and having a balanced immigration policy, as well as having his or her integrity protected. This dilema is often portrayed as a conflict between state interests and human rights. However, this is a false dichotomy, since human rights as established by all the major human rights treaties take into consideration both the collective and the individual protection. None the less, some of the actions so far taken to hinder access to Europe of refugees and migrants and actions taken in the fight against terrorism have ignored the fine tuning of these two dimensions in the human rights treaties. These actions have thereby challenged the integrity of the individual with regard to fundamental issues such as the right to seek asylum, the prohibition against tortue and arbitrary detention and the right to a fair trial. The focus has been state rather than people centred. However, a delicate balance must be struck between the interest of the state, the collective, and the human rights of the individual. The actions so far taken to hinder access to Europe of refugees and migrants and in the fight against terrorism both challenge the integrity of the individual with regard to fundamental issues such as the right to seek asylum, the prohibition against torture and arbitrary detention and the right to a fair trial. The balance has in the beginning of the new century been dramatically pushed away from the protection of the individual towards the protection of the collective and the interests of the state.
Autonomy and Forced Marriages The right to be the main actor in your own life is fundamental. If a person is fully capable of making decisions the autonomy should accordingly be wide, and the more vulnerable a person is the more others will have to make decisions on
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his or her behalf. A number of human rights norms protect the autonomy of the individual, e.g. freedom of assembly and freedom of association, the right to speak one’s own language, the right to marry a person of one’s own free will, etc. The question of personal autonomy is often raised in relation to immigrants and refugees, i.e. in relation to teaching in or of the mother tongue of the immigrant, the possibility of collectively celebrating particular holy days within a minority religion and creating political organizations. However, it is discussed most vigorously in relation to arranged and forced marriages. In many immigrant groups from Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries there is a century old tradition of arranging marriages. It is a complicated system, which differs from culture to culture and depends on the specific position of the family in the local community. In some immigrant groups, in particular from India and Nepal, the caste dimension is an important factor in terms of identifying the spouse. Apart from culture and tradition there is also an element of ensuring that family members get a foothold in a European country to economically secure the family back home. Thus, arranging a marriage between two young people is a puzzle, where the dimension of love, trust and emotions is just one of several factors. From a human rights perspective it is not important whether the marriage is arranged or not, rather the key issue is whether it is voluntary or involuntary. An arranged marriage may turn out successfully and the couple may live happily together. Other situations could be characterized as tolerated marriages where the couple tries to find a modus vivendi to please the family. Finally, the marriage may be clearly involuntary and the young persons have to flee their parents and family in order to avoid a marriage with someone they do not want to live with, or in order to be with someone they love. Sometimes these incidents end tragically with violence, suicide or murder, sometimes the family is reconciled, and sometimes the young person hides for years. If a person is forced into a marriage against his or her own free will, this constitutes a violation of Article 23 of the ICCPR. The article stipulates, ‘No marriage shall be entered into without the free and full consent of the intending spouses’. Prior to ICCPR this fundamental principle was established in the UN Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages from 1962. The latter establishes that a forced marriage is not legally binding on the parties. As a consequence of the ICCPR and the Convention on Consent to Marriage as well as most Western criminal laws, states have to create policies to hinder forced marriages. Only a few states have formulated active policies combating forced marriages, however, in recent years the scenario is undergoing change, and a number of European states have taken initiatives in relation to this issue. Basically, there are three avenues developing in practice: (1) reconciling the family through mediation; (2) creating legal barriers for family reunification from abroad; (3) direct assistance to the victim. Often these approaches are combined in different ways. From a human rights perspective the two first approaches may pose problems. A family reconciling strategy, whereby a third party tries to mediate between the young person and the rest of the family may not be able to sufficiently take into account
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the power structure in the family and the strong wish of the young to accommodate the will of the parents. The victim will often have used an extraordinary amount of psychological power to seek advice or assistance to go against the will of the closest family. When an agreement is made, the family may shortly after break it and the young person will in that case often not have the strength to break away once more. The reconciling instrument should be used; however, experience from Norway and other countries shows that it should be applied with caution. The Danish government has taken another approach by creating new legal barriers for family reunification with people from outside the EU. It is not possible to get family reunification if any of the parties are under the age of 24. Furthermore, the couple cannot settle in Denmark if they have closer ties to another country. This latter rule implies that a Danish citizen who speaks Turkish and has visited Turkey several times will have difficulties in marrying a Turk and settle in Denmark if he or she does not speak any Danish or has not stayed in Denmark for longer periods of time. There is one modification to this barrier, namely if the person living in Denmark has had Danish citizenship, or has lived uninterruptedly for 28 years in Denmark. This modification was made because the rule unintentionally made it impossible for a young ethnic Dane to marry e.g. an American or a Swiss citizen during a stay in one of these countries. The 28 years rule primarily targets people from countries from which Denmark has previously received migrant workers and refugees. The problem with this approach is that it cannot differentiate between involuntary and voluntary marriages but affects everybody. Thus, the right to choose a partner of one’s own free will, will be violated not by the parents and family but by the authorities. Furthermore, there is a risk that the effect of the legislation will be discriminatory if it, as indicated, will primarily affect certain nationalities and not others. Whereas the first two strategies take their outset in the family or the group, respectively, a better and more balanced approach may be to target assistance to the victim. The young girl or boy holds the right to choose a spouse of his or her free will and full consent. It takes good eyes and ears by the surrounding community to hear, understand and react to the signals from these young people. Do they want to stay within the cultural norms of their community, or do they want to break away? If they want to break away from the cultural norms, the teacher, doctor, the policeman, the social worker or whoever is in contact with the young person should be equipped to react appropriately. In most European countries there is still an acute lack of knowledge about how to deal with this situation. Often the people who should assist the person choose to ignore the signals, or they take the conciliation approach. One of the reasons for this is that they have not been trained and, second, that they have very little to offer. There are only a limited number of homes, if any, for the young people to go to if they have to move away from their family. A young Dane with a Turkish background told this story: When I fled my parents’ home the social worker in the municipality referred me to the home for battered women. When I arrived at the home they questioned me because I had not yet been beaten. I had fled in order to avoid
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being beaten – I feared for my life. I was rejected and the social worker told me that he had nowhere else to send me. Luckily, I had a good friend who gave me shelter and I gave up getting assistance from the municipality. Apart from the local community the police and other actors should have clear guidelines as to how they should react when they are approached in a case regarding involuntary marriages. In Sweden and Great Britain the police have, with some success, worked for a number of years with such guidelines. In Great Britain this collaboration has been transnational, in particular, working with Pakistani authorities to assist girls who have been forced back to Pakistan by their families. It is difficult to strike a balance between, on the one hand, the respect for the free voluntary choice of the young girl or boy and, on the other hand, the obligation to protect the said person against entering involuntarily into a marriage arranged by family and friends. The two extremes are easy to recognize, however, there is a vast grey zone between the voluntary and the involuntary marriages, namely the tolerated marriage. Any person is a product of his or her upbringing, thus, how should the free will be defined detached from norms and understandings imposed on each of us? The wish by most people to be on friendly terms with the nearest family, how much does that make a person accept that others define his or her feelings towards a spouse? To what extent does a person dare to run the risk of violence and exclusion for the sake of love?, etc. There are no easy answers to these questions; however, in daily legal life complicated grey zones like these are not unusual, i.e. when is a terminal patient giving his or her free consent to test new medicine? Is that a free choice, or is the person forced by circumstances? For many years, the phenomenon of involuntary marriages was invisible. When it became visible, it was ignored due partly to a respect for other cultures, and an unfocused comprehension of the multicultural society, and partly because of lack of means and ideas to address the issue. In recent years, it has been widely discussed in European countries. In some states because it has been used as a pretext for tightening laws regulating family reunification and in others because some of the young people have been crying out and got the attention of the community. Different approaches have been tried, however, the experiences are not yet advanced enough for us to assess the different methodologies. None the less, from a human rights perspective, which should be governing the democratic states, the protection of the victim and the individual should constitute the guiding principle. This approach could be combined with conciliation and legislation as long as these approaches recognize and respect the principle of free and full consent of the young boy and girl.
Identity and the Right to Wear a Headscarf Identity is what makes people different from one another. Our ability to think and reflect about both big and small questions related to life is what creates our
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specific identity. The more room that is left in society for reflection, for discussion, for philosophical and religious expressions, the more each individual will get the possibility to develop a distinct identity, hopefully, to the benefit of society. Freedom of religion and thought are key concepts in this regard as they constitute some of the very first individual freedoms, later came the freedom of expression, the right to education, etc. Freedom of religion and thought are absolute rights, however, the freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs can be limited in the interest of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of rights and freedoms of others. Despite the fact that freedom of religion has been formally recognized for several centuries it still creates difficulties and heated discussions in most European countries. The discussion on the position of the Church of Scientology has been targeted in the public discussion in several countries. In France, for example, the discussion on the position of the Church of Scientology and other sects has led to the passing of a law on sectarian movements, which is highly questionable in a human rights perspective. However, most persistent and widespread is the discussion on the space that the Islamic faith may occupy in the dominant Christian European societies. The discussion about the headscarf of the Muslim girl has obtained a highly symbolic status in that regard from both sides in the discourse. The use of religious headgear has always provoked and created discussions from the Jewish Kippah, the Sikh turbans to the Muslim headscarf. The debate about the Muslim headscarf first started in France in 1989 and later in other European countries such as Germany and the Nordic countries. The common focus of these discussions is the use of headscarf in the public domain, but the specific issues are different. In France, the discussion is mainly focused upon school children and their use of a headscarf, whereas in Germany the attention is paid to the teachers’ use of a scarf and how that may impose a particular religious understanding on others. In Denmark, the attention has been directed towards the right to wear a headscarf at the workplace and several court cases have dealt with the issue in relation to shop assistants. There are two important elements in the discourse about the headscarf. The first has to do with oppression of women whereas the second one relates to religion. For more than three decades the liberation of women in Europe has been high on the agenda. Major steps have been taken, but there is still a long way to go. Many European women (and men) see Muslim women living among them, but not like them. They see young Muslim women being treated by their husbands and family members as their mothers or grandmothers were treated. Putting the scarf on the head is seen as an act of submission to a fiercely male dominated culture and religion, and it is seen as if their Muslim sisters share few of the victories won by European women. Another dimension of the discourse relates to the question of having religious symbols in the public sphere. In France, which is explicitly a secular state, this has been an important part of the argument for proposing a general ban against wearing religious symbols in the classroom. In Germany, the argument
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has focused more on the imposition by teachers of religious beliefs on their pupils and students. In Denmark, which has a state religion, the scarf has mainly been perceived as a threat against Danish culture, or as a demonstrated unwillingness to become integrated into the Danish Christian (many would say secular) society. The discussion on the headscarf is in many ways more difficult than the one on involuntary marriages. On the surface, it is a simple thing to wear a scarf, while at the very same time it is loaded with symbolism, which makes it complicated. However, the human rights dimensions of the issue are linked to freedom of religion, on the one hand, and to equal treatment of women on the other hand. What is the role of the state in this regard? The state shall create an enabling environment for people to develop their religion and develop themselves as human beings. The limits of this environment are where the rights of others are at stake. In a secular school, the teacher can be asked not to actively impose her religion on the students. However, wearing a scarf will most often not be considered along the lines of actively imposing her religion on the pupils. Thus, most cases concerning the wearing of a scarf by a student will not violate the rights of others. Rather, it is mostly a concern about the girl herself, which prevails. With a ban on the headscarf, the state will choose for her at the benefit of what the state believes to be a higher level of freedom. The right to self-determination should, however, be the guiding principle when the rights of others are not at stake. Human rights are based upon the respect for the individual, his or her ability to make decisions, conscious and free will. To force people to choose freedom seems to be an absurdity. The state has an obligation to respect also those decisions made by the individual that are not popular and even disapproved by a majority as long as they do not harm others. This is the soul of the open society. If, in the name of secularism women are forced against their free will to take off the scarf, secularism suddenly changes its face from a system, which creates room for all religions to having a face very similar to Christian or Muslim intolerance. If her parents, husband or anyone else forces a girl, to wear a headscarf, society has a role to play in order to assist the girl to develop her own religious or non-religious life. In relation to involuntary marriages the local community has an obligation to listen, assist and guide these girls in order for them to be wellequipped to make their own decisions and make a free choice. It could be argued that a ban on the headscarf will speed up the process and make it easier for those girls who do not want to wear a headscarf. This cannot be ignored, however, using intolerance as a weapon in the fight for tolerance is hardly a way to go. The goal does not justify the means and the goal may not be met by using methods, which are incompatible with the values themselves.
Conclusion The presence of new groups of immigrants in a period of time with increased globalization has led to important discussions about the core values in a liberal
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democracy. Without such fundamental discussions our democratic life may be short lived due to a lack of interest and new sources of inspiration. The question raised is how Western liberal democracies should react to the challenges caused by new migrant groups. What would be consistent with a human rights approach? Human rights have the strength that they have been universally accepted. They have already been negotiated for decades, thus a strong platform for shared values is available. It could be argued that human rights are not universally recognized, i.e. documented by the overwhelming amount of violations taking place in all parts of the world. None the less, it is necessary to separate implementation from recognition. The key UN human rights conventions are signed and ratified by most states; however, no states have a completely clean record. Notwithstanding this fact, all states should strive towards the fulfilment of their obligations. Further, human rights are generally in conformity with all the major religions, although it should be noted that in all religions there are groupings that claim superiority of religious norms rather than human rights. A society cannot be multicultural to an extent where anything is permitted by referring to culture and religion. If that were the case the minority groups would no longer live in a liberal democracy, but in an isolated community with its own illiberal rules. In the words of Locke: ‘There can be no private enjoyment of freedom of a kind that violates public moral order and lawfulness’. Since human rights have a universal status, it could be required that all people living in a liberal democracy subscribe to the values enshrined in the human rights standards. They offer protection for the individual as well as they offer a fair level of flexibility for cultural particularities. In a liberal democracy the state has an obligation to respect and protect human rights of the people within its jurisdiction. In relation to the three cases discussed, the state should respect the free will of the person to marry whomever he or she wishes and settle at the habitual residence. In the same way the state should respect the free will to wear a headscarf, also in public places. These freedoms should be respected as long as they do not infringe on the rights of others. Furthermore, the state has an obligation to protect the person who is forced into a marriage or forced to wear a headscarf. This could be by prosecuting the parents or family members who are responsible for the violation of the rights of the young person. There can be no cultural or religious exemption dealing with criminal or other law issues derived from human rights concepts. The state would also have an obligation to protect the right of a girl, if she is discriminated against because of the headscarf. As an integral part of the obligation to protect the rights of the individual, the state should assist young people in living a life outside the traditional family, if that is required. This is an area where enabling pieces of legislation, state policies and, in particular, the local community and its actors should be aware of their responsibilities. Furthermore, such an approach should stimulate an intolerant environment to change its attitude in direction of accepting the core human rights values.
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Some of the liberal democracies in Europe have gone part of the way described above, however, they have also taken a number of illiberal steps and have come close to violating the rights of ethnic minorities. Laws have been tightened in relation to obtaining family reunification to an extent where a citizen of a country cannot be reunited in his or her own country with a person from a country outside the EU. The freedom to choose a spouse has been limited. Simultaneously, the freedom to choose your own religion and adhere to its dress code according to your understanding has been limited by limitations in wearing a headscarf. In relation to immigration control and the fight against terrorism, the post9/11 policies have sidelined human rights concerns in key areas such as arbitrary detention, and the right to a fair trial; the prohibition against torture also seem to be challenged both in relation to people seeking protection as well as people being detained on terrorist charges. The arrival and presence of an increasing number of refugees and migrants in Europe and North America has challenged the human rights regime. Furthermore, some migrants do not share the human rights values and states violate the same rights in their attempts to make these groups respect the core freedoms in a liberal democracy. In the time to come, there will be a great responsibility on both sides to consider carefully their responsibilities in the human rights equation. Rights are combined with duties, and one of the duties is to respect the rights and freedom of others including your daughter and son as well as your political opponents. Governments should recall the close link between the development of human rights and minority issues, and the amount of conflicts created through history due to lack of respect for different minorities. It takes an open human rights based democracy to create a unified society respecting diversity.
4
From Foreigners to ‘Abnormal Aliens’ How the Faces of the Enemy Have Changed Following September the 11th1 Didier Bigo
The issue of whether the immigrant is perceived as a benefit or a danger was first raised as such in the mid-1970s in order to justify de facto the end of legal immigration for work, and in an attempt to obtaining a ‘balance’ between the costs and advantages of immigration. The amount of economic research has escalated showing results that almost always follow the ideology of those who carried them out.2 Sociological studies have stepped in by putting an accent on cultural differences, whether this was to value the concept of cultural ethnicity as a source for mutual enrichment, or to unveil those cultural identities in conflict as well as to develop about the danger of the immigrant’s culture jeopardising the values of the dominant native culture.3 Public policy studies have pushed the debate towards the fear of immigrants putting at risk the welfare state once they become legally unemployed, while others were putting an accent on the policies of liberal capitalism, its need for underpaid labour and strategies of a back door, of leaving a margin for illegal labour, with badly paid jobs demanding long working hours.4 Opinion surveys and the analysis of the role of the media no longer focus on the issue of welcoming immigrants and their children in a bid to know whether they actually offered any advantages or inconvenience, instead they focus in what the ‘others’ think about migrants; the ‘others’ being defined as those expressing their views in the name of the dominant group and as an ‘us’.5 This has produced an over-representation of political parties, whether extremist or not, playing with populist behaviour.6 The ‘debate’ about their ‘welcoming’ has taken a moral point of view and has often put to one side the structural reasons behind the challenges faced by public policies, and which has at a later date been attributed to immigrants. The idea of this debate being present in the mind of every member of the public has made people believe there were a number of facts that responsible people could be aware of and upon which they could react with a concern for expertise and balanced judgement. A sub-discipline belonging to the study of immigrant has tried to establish itself at the centre of the different fields of knowledge by adding thoughts about international regimes and transnationalisation, and less often about the comparative sociology of religions.7
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All this display of institutional knowledge has in fact legitimised the original issue instead of challenging it, except in the case of some critical theory work insisting on the construction of a social and political framework of the migration problem, and therefore, of the key role for political and media professionals within that construction, in situations where there are in fact complex social phenomena linked to the transit of individuals, and the representation systems depending simultaneously on bodies encapsulated within these terms and on the meanings given to them by the language used.8 ‘Constructing the political spectacle’ around the idea that foreigners are a source of threat and danger has been one of the leitmotifs of contemporary political governments.9 Whether this was under the totalitarian view of the public enemy leading to physical elimination and re-education camps, or to the more euphemistic view regarding the stigmatisation of the enemy at home during the period of crisis of democracies (emergency discourses), and which leads to everyday racial profiling practices, to camps intended for sending back the ‘illegal’ foreigners to where they came from, or to some sort of ‘confinement’ in ghettos to hold children of foreigners as second class citizens.10 Strategic thinking has always been uncomfortable with these internal political games. It prefers to associate home with the people to be defended; with what they understand as friend, whereas the term external is defined as something dangerous, to do with the enemy. The line between us and them, good and evil, citizens and foreigners becomes then clear. On the contrary, the way of thinking of intelligence services has long since had a feel for areas of non-distinctions, for infiltrated enemies, for ‘latent’ agents, for the conquering power of minds. The Cold War has been a matrix in which these judgements have been structured. And it still is despite the transformations which have taken place since it ended. Paradoxically, the end of a territorialised enemy has multiplied the anxieties of those in/security professionals as finding a new potential enemy. They have voiced more than ever, and due to the absence of a direct enemy, they have regarded the risks and vulnerabilities brought to contemporary societies by the rise of globalisation, transnationalisation of the flow of goods, of people and ideas – and if some have relished putting an accent on democratisation after the end of bipolarity, others have seen in it the end of the State as they knew it, and what is even worse for them; the end to their own jobs (police officers, military staff, etc.). From that moment, the image of the enemy has diffracted ‘in all directions’ as Régis Debray would say.11 Foreigners and especially illegal immigrants have been considered as a risk for the welfare state and all immigrants as a risk for the identity of society. An article in the journal Spiegel in 1993 encapsulated the transformation in showing a ‘crowd’ of Eastern refugees as a substitute for the threat of an invasion of Russian tanks. At the same period discourses regarding ethnic minorities were being voiced in parallel, stating that young people in the suburban areas were also part of the so called ‘internal threat’ and were the soil for terrorist networks of radical Muslim origin, even if the evidence of the trial in 1986 and 1995 proved that it was impossible to recruit them and that the networks were obliged to recruit outside of France.
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Immigrants were, in these discourses, if not directly dangerous, at least the source of the problem. Nevertheless a segment of the military apparatus in the highest ranks was always opposed to these changes of level of perception regarding enmity. To them, the future enemy was not represented by poor immigrants, regardless of them being illegal or not, or by some groups of criminals described by intelligence services with terms such as organised crime or global terrorism, the enemy was China; considered as the last Communist stronghold or as one of the nexus of the ‘Islamic-Confucianist’ connection. The hostile foreigner was a rogue state, not individuals in network. All this has changed according to the way the security and political scenario has been built following the terrorist attacks on September 11 2001. The discourse from the intelligence services has appeared as carrying a weight of ‘truth’. The hostile foreigner was this time considered as part of the network of individuals infiltrated inside the US and who had ramifications all over the world. The image of the Mafia stretching its tentacles was alive again. The hostile foreigner was a group of hostile fanatics, religious extremists, more or less irrational and ready to commit suicide. This together with their readiness to use weapons of mass destruction created a totally new situation due to the size of the danger. This vision has justified the merging of services, the release of the institutional hierarchies between police and army, under the orders of intelligence services with operational powers managing the dangers in a preventive (proactive and pre-emptive) manner. The foreigner was suddenly considered as a small group, or was seen as an irrational, hostile individual, inside the country and almost impossible to be dealt with, using conventional methods.12 The detective and intelligence profession had to find a new dimension and become globalised in order to be able to manage the individualisation of the dangers. Fragmentation was answered with the surveillance of these movements at a global scale. Any unusual behaviour became suspect. All unusual behaviour, even from your neighbour could mean that he was a hostile foreigner. This programme of ‘mastering’ the world and the future, which as one will see, leads to the ‘fictionalisation of the world’ placing it into a ‘maximum security’ programme, has not benefited from unanimous approval. It has not stopped opposition and has not been able to establish itself as the new programme of truth. It has been forced to make numerous concessions to the traditional view of war and the hostile foreigner, but nevertheless, it leads to a fundamental reconstruction of the concept of foreigner, of the concept of hostility and destabilises the categories of ordinary language. The term ‘war’ no longer has the same meaning and even prisoner of war has a very different sense. The word ‘terrorism’ has reached an unparalleled magnitude in terms of its meaning and of the social groups that can find themselves labelled as terrorists. The term Islamist when referring to Muslims and to Islamic religion has become commonly used despite the reminder from university scholars that Islam, Islamic belief and Islamists were not the same. The term immigrant has become a semantic synonymous with ‘suspect’ and ‘potentially hostile foreigner’. The word foreigner has been stretched beyond the meaning of non-citizen in order to
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describe an unusual behaviour or even a profile whose morphing has revealed a possible risk in the future without one being able to put the finger on any tangible element, but which presented in that way, allows plenty of room for suspicion. The official discourses alleging mass destruction weapons in Iraq have shown by merging the present and the near future. Confronted with this death sentence of the language following the political reaction of September 11 – that Ulrich Beck was one of the first to really understand13 – one must revisit these categories and try to find out in what way September 11 has really changed (or not) the meaning of immigrant, of foreigner, and has reconfigured (or not) the terms of the ‘debate’ by moving away from the concept of a balance between advantages and inconvenience of immigration. A lot has already been said about the impact of September 11 on strategic issues, on the redirection of American policy towards the only focus of a policy of ‘war on terrorism’ and about the formal announcement from President George Bush of being ‘with the US or against them’.14 Struck on their soil and taken by surprise, the US have taken draconian measures against all those who could look like suspects, and as a priority, against foreigners residing in the US and having links with Muslim countries. They have changed almost instantly the rules concerning the security in planes and airports, the antiterrorist laws and the investigating power of intelligence agents and police officers.15 They have transformed their immigration policy and their system of access to the country, and they have even created to this purpose a new ministerial department: The Homeland Security Department, by restructuring the traditional hierarchies amongst the Ministries of Justice, the State Department, the CIA and other intelligence agencies. They have integrated the management of natural disaster situations, the fight against the effect of weapons of mass destruction and the management of airports and passengers with the control of the borders and the management of immigration in the American territory, thus creating de facto a continuum associating immigrants with terrorist danger.16 They have been putting in place exceptional measures, which date back as far as from 14 September 2001 following the Congress voluntary renunciation of its prerogatives regarding war and the control of foreign policy; leaving a blank cheque to the administration. The measures have been known under the name of the US Patriot Act and the different executive orders following it, and by now the passing of a Patriot Act 2 going even farther than the first one. Concerning foreigners, it is indubitably after the statement of George Bush on 13 November 2001 declaring ‘an extraordinary emergency’ and following the decision to create special military commissions with powers to judge any aliens suspect of terrorism that one has seen the most spectacular change with the implementation of different detention centres around the world, the best known being the one of Guantanamo Bay: Camp X-Ray renamed Camp Delta. That name has become synonymous of arbitrariness inside the law, as the place of ‘exception’ to the rules, and that is conceived to give the appearance of respecting the positive rights while it brings into disrepute the fundamental principles of the American Constitution and the
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international treaties regarding human rights.17 Protests have arisen both from the European countries and from within the US, led by groups in favour of Civil Liberties, but this has hardly affected the detention policy for foreign individuals suspected of being terrorists, even if the judges of the Supreme Court want to have their say and not to leave a blank cheque to the government. The implications of this policy are therefore enormous and apply equally to foreign and domestic policy, to foreign affairs, external security and to internal security, homeland security, and on the way the relationship amongst danger, security and freedom is re-conceptualised. In terms of civil liberties, the discrimination created between American citizens and non-citizens (including those with permanent residence) has taken a considerable dimension given the fact that, the position of the administration is to say that only the first ones could claim to have access to some of the fundamental principles, a fair trial with the recognition of the rights of the defence, to know the content of the case files, the right to know when the trial will take place, the right to have a jury and to know on what legal basis the client is being charged. For the detainees in Guantanamo, outside of the US territory, these rights are not legally binding on the administration. And the possibility to detain indefinitely people without disclosing the charges held against them, which, as one remembers, was refused when the vote for the Patriot Act took place on 26 October 2001, was finally given the thumbs up on 13 November with the Military Order. The latter is the most visible tip of the iceberg and has led the American government to interrogate systematically over several days more than 5000 nationals from Middle East countries on the sole basis of their nationality and to arrest several of them, and also to carry out frequent ‘surveys’ at the centre of the population being targeted and to encourage allied countries to do the same (cf. Saudi Arabia), and in addition, to implement a series of practices that are derogatory to the international conventions already accepted in a bid to centralise and control the IT databases containing the personal data of these foreigners or long-term residents. This has not only played a negative role as regards the civil liberties and individual rights of foreigners in the US, but also those of foreigners in Europe through pressure imposed by the American government regarding the laws to be adopted in relation to the fight against terrorism.18 The work carried out by the research team from Nijmegen University has given full details of these practices in Europe which are too often forgotten by those who only debate ‘internally’ in the US. They have shown the impact in the European Union on demands for asylum, on immigrant, on tourists, on the management of the control of borders, and one could add on transport management to a global scale, on the ways demonstrations are linked to terrorism, as well as on communication via the Internet.19 I will not develop here along those lines. Instead, I will focus on a narrower subject, which is the meaning of the word foreigner and the way it has been linked to enmity since September 11. The fact that foreigners have been considered as a potential enemy during periods of crisis is far from being something new. The issue of the spy, the traitor,
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the infiltrate enemy is contemporaneous to popular mobilisation campaigns. But in general, one associates this issue with that of an undercover war amongst a small number of professionals and not to the presence of communities that had migrated many generations ago. When the foreigner is targeted as an enemy, it is so because it belongs to another Government, to a different political regime. It is not because of its personal profile. The end of bipolarity had already; by depriving policy makers of a massive enemy geographically localised and symmetrical to the US, created a destabilisation of the simplest categories, and in particular, of the appropriateness between external and internal, and between friend and foe. Since 1993 one could envisage migrating Russian crowds replacing the threat of Soviet tanks. People had also put the accent on the destabilisation of political regimes in the case of massive flows of population having different values, and envisaged an identity or societal related security endangered by these flows. In some countries of the European Union discourses on organised crime across nations and terrorism had already established the link with the presence of immigrants poorly integrated in the host countries (which are not always welcoming countries). Academics had tried to materialise these fears by evoking an imaginary confrontation between the different cultures or civilisations that were antagonist in their values. But the dominant feeling which remained was one of an American superpower which was untouchable and which only had to watch the steps located furthermost in his ‘empire’, doing so for humanitarian considerations rather than for strategic reasons. The hostile foreigner was a residual category. This has changed with September 11 2001. In geopolitical terms, the once marginal Middle East issue has become central, and contrary to all discussions being held at the time of the Afghanistan war in order to make people believe that there were no links between this Islam of the Taliban; which was defined as specific, and the Iraqis and Israeli-Palestinian challenges, nowadays one sees that the global strategic objective of the US is to try to impose by the use of force a ‘democratisation’ of all the Arab countries and by extension of all those Muslims, as a way to show to them that ‘nobody will take lightly our power’.20 Further to this direct effect aiming to reshape the Middle East and to hold on to the oil market, the US seems to want to anticipate the development of China as a great antagonist power and assign European countries a role as mere assistants but not partners at the centre of a balanced alliance. They even want them to have a lesser role at the centre of international organisations by limiting their ability to appeal to international legal arguments and to try to bind the US government by reminding it of its obligations towards international law and fundamental human rights. The US government seems only to want obedient and deferent allies which will follow the interests of the US as more valuable than their own or international legal rules. This is the US government’s want behind the call of ‘sovereignty’ as a principle more important than justice or the international legal order.21 All these transformations give to the image of the potential enemy a very broad spectrum ranging from the destruction of the regimes present in Iraq and Afghanistan, to putting under pressure the monarchy
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in Saudi Arabia and to the thoughts of destabilising Venezuela, passing through anti-French jokes and final judgements about the low importance of the UN and all the efforts to avoid war between nations after the Second World War. But the Achilles’ heel of the US government discourse is internal. Certainly not every foreigner or citizen of foreign origin can become an enemy, especially in a country such as the US that has been in favour of maintaining the ancestral and affective links of all the minorities the country is made of. One must choose and encourage priorities. Who is then the enemy to watch for? Who must one be prepared to fight? The designation of an axis of evil has become almost a routine activity for the Pentagon, the State Department and the Homeland Security Department. Despite this, they find it difficult to agree on priorities. There is definitely a ‘tradition’. In fact, this axis of evil rewrites partially and only partially the list of the Governments labelled as Rogue States, bearing in mind that such a list had once been rewritten as the list of States sponsoring terrorism in the 1970s. The only difference is that the axis of evil is no longer defined solely by the geopolitical challenges between governments. It becomes emancipated from a classical cartography of hostile political regimes at the moment when, despite all, it helps the list get longer. One must therefore add the organisations opposed to pro-American regimes and that have the capacity to make a stand against American interests, and even against American soil. The case of Pakistan is an example. While it is considered as one of the places where most individuals are recruited with the intention of attacking the US, it does not appear at the top of the axis of evil list. The same applies to Saudi Arabia, Indonesia or the Philippines. To the hostile political regimes list, another list is added, that of the political organisations that are hostile and are ready to embrace violence. Enormous power is attributed to Al Qaeda because it is a way to federate; at least in the discussions, a nebula of organisations with different and contradictory interests making people believe in the capacity of Bin Laden and his followers as clandestine ‘orchestra conductors’. It is now at that level of the clandestine organisations and not at that of the governments that one places the most serious danger. This action makes the enemy ‘invisible’, in the sense that it is more difficult to establish a connection with a given territory. The good old days of seeing a powerful but clearly located enemy such as the USSR have long gone and have created ironically a sense of nostalgia amongst conservatives. The Pentagon, despite its opposition to the State Department regarding the nature of the operations to be carried out, has always preferred to minimise this hiatus about the localisation of the hostile foreigner. For the Pentagon, clandestine organisations are only dangerous if they pull out their political regime resources and then support and supply them with weapons of mass destruction. In order to hit Al Qaeda, one only has to strike at the logistic in Afghanistan and to continue with Sudan and Somalia, discouraging at the same time any government ready to supply them with weapons of mass destruction, and also attacking some countries such as Iraq. The Homeland Security Department has itself a more ‘individualistic’ vision of the threat. Within its role as protector of the borders, it only comes across
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individuals who are virtually hostile and hard to detect, but never across armies marching into the country. From this moment, the more war or instability are developed abroad, the more the reasons for hostile individuals to become active. The Iraqi conflict jeopardises the fight against terrorism and the protection of the homeland, the formula ‘war on terrorism’ does not solve anything. General Wesley Clark, one of the Democrat candidates, has made his authoritative voice heard in relation to this chapter by breaking the post-September 11 ‘consensus’ and the unanimity regarding foreign policy. He has estimated that such consensus has cost the Democrats very dear in terms of the party image and that it had deterred many American voters who were against the war in Iraq and were traditionally Democrats from voting for them. These voters have felt they are under-represented by the political party system and are not ready to admit that the war in Iraq is a mandatory step in the fight against the terrorism of Al Qaeda. The next elections will be played without doubt over this issue of the image of the enemy, over its real incarnation and over the way to fight it. These are the two points on which I would like now to expand further, because they concern very precisely the foreigner living in the US, those who want to enter the country and those considered by the US as a threat to their security. Despite the discussion over moral clarity making a distinction between the axis of good and the axis of evil, it seems that the American government struggles to define the boundaries of this axis of evil, and in particular, if the latter is already or not yet inside the country and inside or not the minds of Muslim-American people. It oscillates continuously between a traditional concept of an external enemy located in specific States, all more or less linked to some Islamic interpretations wanting to challenge the West, and a concept of enemy where all Muslims (including and especially those converted to Islam) would appear potentially dangerous and would form a fifth column having already entered the US. This would imply from that very moment the presence of an enemy within the country itself. This second vision takes us back to the McCarthy era where the fears of communist infiltration were always present, and are now creating the idea than global vigilance is the solution. Surveillance must dwell inside the mind and the heart of everyone. Nevertheless, since ‘thought police’ are not yet operational or on the agenda, it is necessary to find criteria to make a distinction between the good and the bad Americans, implicitly with an association between the good, the citizens, the white, and the bad, the foreigners or those naturalised a short while ago, the Muslims. Finally, the novelty following September 11 is not so much to be found on the side of geopolitics and imperialist temptations than within this structural indistinction between internal and external, once enmity is mentioned. The violence from clandestine organisations infiltrated on the territory calls for a review of war tactics, even as it revives the use of it. The war of the army must be backed by operations involving the police, by surveillance and intelligence that end up by supplanting war itself. The characteristic thing about contemporary times is precisely this destabilisation of the categories regarding the perceptions of war, and of national
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mobilisation of the people who support it under a Clausewitzian strategy. There is nowadays not any dual polarisation simplifying the choices and blocking third party positions. There is not any special time scale where the world could be differentiated between friends and foes, by a rise to the extreme and a solution of the crisis. The Schmittian momentum of the exception allowing executive decisions while suspending the rule of law, is itself suppressed, distorted inside the aleatory timing of the struggle and leads nowhere. It drags in time waiting for a new randomised action coming from an enemy without any definite shape and has no interest whatsoever in entering the timeframe of continuous tension, a test of strength. On the contrary it has great interest in playing with time, striking at will every two or three years without any possible anticipation of when and where. Yet, a ‘permanent’ state of emergency cannot be maintained when confronting an enemy that cannot be localised, and that could be inside the country as well as already outside of it. The anthrax crisis has been, in this regard, particularly significant. It has shown that the lessons from the McCarthy era have had the expected effect and that the American government had clearly moved from the option of showing an internal enemy so embedded within the American population that it would be undetectable. Far from creating a generalised suspicion, which would have been the case if one had publicised the potential perpetrators of the anthrax scare – which seemed in the eye of the FBI suspicion, to be one of the US responsible for the safety programme against biological weapons! – the issue has been silenced and nobody has been put on trial. One has instead focused the public attention on an enemy, infiltrated but more or less recognisable: the radical Muslim, the ‘wahhabite’. Here one had an external enemy infiltrated inside the territory but nevertheless identifiable as different from the ‘us’ of the community. As mentioned by Gabriel Peries and Ayse Ceyhan, the enemy inside the territory is not the enemy within.22 There is a difference in ‘quality’ between the two. Nevertheless a slippage on either side is always possible. And this is that what seems to be happening with the discussion regarding those ‘converted to radical Islam’. One is ever more suspicious of the black Americans converted to Islam or worse of the white boys embedded in the rules of their society but nevertheless potential traitors who are even more difficult to detect and to catch. Then one is obliged to dress them up with particular signs, which explain their ‘abnormality’.23 Yet, if one examines it, there is a political paranoia or more precisely a political demonology that develops from places where the use of surveillance technology is supposed to find what the human intelligence cannot find, namely, signs, and marks of a potential hostile intention.24 This has to do with something that goes beyond racism and the transformation of the concept of foreigner that is taking shape at the centre of these technological experiments. One gets further away from the usual drifting of controllers towards physical features indicating a hostile intention supposed additionally to belong in particular to a population ethnically identifiable (Muslim would be Arabs) to the benefit of a technological concept of surveillance classified in a system of actions and in the anticipation of profiles. This gives a little bit less freedom to ordinary arbitrary forms of everyday racism in which ‘the
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personal enemy becomes the public enemy’. In this case, a look, or an attitude do not make in such a stark way the differentiation between the foreigner or the citizen of foreign origin that is tolerated, and the one suspected of being a terrorist. The ‘power of the security control desk’ held by security control agents is perceived also as dangerous and the controllers must themselves be controlled. Yet, as it is impossible to give them practical codes of conduct limiting the category of the people they have to search, one aims at reconfiguring the searches around the ‘actions’ and their ‘parameters’. Of course, both mechanisms do not oppose each other symmetrically. The INS has tried to distinguish between citizens, foreigners subjected to less severe control, and those coming from countries known as a risk and subjected to reinforced control, but at the same time the signal given has been to be suspicious of those ‘looking’ too perfectly ‘American’, ‘too white American’. The legal category distinguishing citizens from foreigners can no longer be used as a reference point in this ‘political demonology’, even when foreigners are the most controlled and punished, all the more easily since they have fewer rights. Citizens can also be dangerous. The recent detention in Guantanamo of American citizens like Padilla, as well as the imprisonment of a US citizen converted to Islam and who acted as Imam for the prisoners, US Army Captain James J. Yee, shows this quasi-infinite extension of the ‘fear of the contamination of minds’.25 How will it be possible to find again the boundaries, the distinctions between those who are hostile and the others when everybody is inside the country? How can people be protected against those wanting to get in and how to clarify their motivations? How can somebody anticipate their actions? How can somebody control the fear of having fear of others, of all the others, including their relatives?26 These questions haunt the security services but remain unanswered, except for those questions relating to the most classical control procedures and the indiscriminate use of IT technologies linked to other identification technologies using digital imprints, photo numerical systems, iris or genetic imprints. There is no doubt that this last point is essential when referring to the foreigner as a potential enemy. It is no longer really important to define the foreigner as the citizen from another Nation, but rather as an ‘abnormal’ whether a citizen or not. And here the alienness or abnormality is linked to specific statistical and technological processes building the profiles of what is normal and what differs from it. It is under this perspective that one must read the Total Information Awareness Project, renamed in order to disguise the disproportionate ambition the Terrorism Information Awareness Project (partly blocked by the Congress in one of its first act of opposition to the administration). Nevertheless here is for the (in)security professionals and the politicians the image of the future enemy, of the new hostility which is being reconfigured with a capillarisation of political conflict and of surveillance. It is no longer the foreigner as such who is the one being targeted, but all those, foreigners or not, who have an action profile that the behaviouralists establishing the profiles have judged as being a sign of potential danger. For example buying an outbound airline ticket without purchasing a return ticket, buying that ticket with cash and not with a credit card, buying it
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from a third city and not from the point of departure … for example having lately seen films or read books showing an attraction for the East and for the Islam, having travelled to those countries, etc. The foreigner is no longer the noncitizen, he is the one with the strange, bizarre and slightly deviant, abnormal behaviour, or the opposite, having such normal behaviour that it seems suspicious. The main advantage of this policy is that it hides itself behind ‘technical neutrality’. It appears as reasonable and not subjected to classic racism. It is inspired by the science of traceability and aims to anticipate through an in depth analysis, action sequences in which the computer has no soul and therefore, does not have the human defect of classifying some rather than others according to the colour of their skin. But this ‘technical’ redefinition of the foreigner does not solve at all the failure to determine the image of the enemy. It is all about a forward escape on to the ‘technology’ as last resort and far from developing reasonable anti-terrorist policies; it drags the politician on to a world of ‘fiction’. This is what I will examine now in more detail, by revisiting the results of the fight against terrorism as they are perceived by the different professionals and confronting the narrative of efficiency with the tendency to foresee the future. Have anti-terrorist policies been transformed, and improved following September 11 2001? Are the people more secure than before? Are they protected from Terror? And in that case, even if civil liberties are endangered, if innocent people are targeted to find the ‘real’ terrorists among them, is it not a legitimate action? If the contrary is to do nothing or to be blocked on the fight against terrorism and if by respecting civil liberties, everybody is in danger to be dead next time a bombing is planned, the efficiency of security is the absolute priority. This narrative is repeated again and again in the US and partly in the UK by Tony Blair. But it supposes mainly a real improvement of the fight against terrorism through the war on terrorism at the global scale and a strong belief that Al Qaeda is planning to destroy the US, the Western civilisation, the ‘earth’ next time they strike, that they are not rational political actors but fanatics possessing arms of mass destruction and willing to die and to kill everybody with them. This eschatological vision of the future as the time of Apocalypse described in the Bible has more to do with belief, with religion than with specific knowledge of the political motivations of the clandestine organisation Al Qaeda. But is it nevertheless justified because it is not possible to take the risk to fail to protect the population from a massive attack? Only the future could answer, but the danger is that some politicians want to become ‘oracle’ of the future and to speak in the name of the future, to be the new ‘Moses’ of the world. Future, anticipation, fictions are strongly connected and the future of human fate is not to be known for sure, but it seems that astrology and proactive policing as well as preventive defence are now working hand by hand to justify one discourse about our future which justify a permanent state of exception, only tools for more efficiency. Has the shock caused by the event of September 11, without precedent for the US but which has at another scale, a long history in the European countries, modified the way to fight terrorism, the definition of the latter and the collaboration of
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the police? Has the focus on the foreigner borne any fruits? Has the double action of conducting an attack on the external logistical bases of terrorism and on the protection of the American territory by means of vigilance extended to all, been fully successful? If the legitimacy of the fight is debatable, at least is it operational and a real success? At pains to find arguments about legitimacy, the idea of some policy makers and academics supporting the transformation of the vision of the enemy is to justify the changes through efficiency, as if efficiency supports its own legitimacy by itself. But the efficiency is only supposedly there. It is more a fiction than a reality. Some recent works of journalists point out that the whole fight against terrorism has been radically transformed and that finally politics have been efficient. This efficiency makes it legitimate despite some ‘addicts’ to civil liberties that are ‘out of date’. Until now they say, there was no real collaboration between police services and between the latter and intelligence services. Now, thanks to the strong political will of President Bush and his insistence that the European Union get into tune, information would flow, would be better analysed, more centralised and the proof of this efficiency would be found in the lack of significant terrorist attacks on American soil and on the closest allies, obliging terrorists to choose more ‘exotic’ locations such as Bali. The ‘Homeland Security Department’ would assure the ‘protection’ of the American Nation and ‘of its backyard’. American military would dismantle the international bases of terrorism one by one. Afghanistan, Iraq, and surely tomorrow Iran and Palestine. In short, the war against terrorism would be efficient, useful and optimism should get a facelift.27 Based often upon political statements, press conferences and superficial interviews, this research belongs rather to a communication policy without critical sense than to an analysis of the policies in use and their difficulties. Without attempting to be exhaustive, but following the interviews that I have conducted in 2002–2003, with professionals of the fight against terrorism in all European Union countries, my judgement is less categorical and my feelings more pessimistic about the improved efficiency.28 Collaboration between police and justice services across the Atlantic does not work well, because the Americans have voluntarily neglected that route to the benefit of an approach in terms of intelligence services, military technology and war action.29 Instead of thinking together and trying to learn from Europeans, French, British, Spanish and Italians, the Americans have wanted to impose a model subordinating the justice and criminal police to the imperatives of the intelligence services and to the research of intelligence in any direction without sufficient levels of precaution in terms of individual rights, civil liberties and protection of data. National police services, whether national police or crime squads or anti-terrorist squads, as well as civil police with military status and the different gendarmeries or Italian carabinieri, and even the European based structures such as Europol or Interpol are sceptical about the great ‘fusion’ of information, or about the idea of a ‘Common Pot’ where everything would be poured in. The credibility of the information is different depending on whether
76 Political and Legal Security it comes from trials, the criminal police, or from police intelligence services and from electronic footage originating from military intelligence or even from random tapped conversations coming from Echelon and the protocol Europe – FBI.30 Far from encouraging the sharing of information, this ‘desectorisation’ of services and their usual homologues, this effort of interconnection between different networks of (in)security professionals produces great resistance. The indiscriminate use of IT and biometric technologies in order to put as many people as possible under surveillance is considered at best useless, and at worse a ‘freedom killer’ and inefficient, because it increases the number of people to be watched without providing the human means of surveillance adapted to the individuals regarded as most dangerous. The attitude of some American services towards their European counterparts does not help their relationship, because they want to manage the analysis procedures and the processing of information, to decide on the risk profile and to only allow the Europeans to act as informers upstream and underlings downstream. Is this the start of a ‘Latin Americanisation’ of Europe in its relationships with the US? Such was the idea of some of the interviewed professionals we met. One of them recalled the fact that Western Europeans were in the process of learning at their expense from the US the experience of what the European Union has done to the candidate countries and to the Balkans. The asymmetry of the relationships creates more and more distrust while political discourses insist more and more on the ‘reinforced trust’. But this leitmotif, even if it is shared by rulers, is not at all sufficient to establish reciprocity in exchanges of information, which is the first and main guarantee of a successful collaboration. If the members of the criminal police feel pushed to one side by the intelligence services and the army, the bitterness of the judges in terms of the fight against terrorism is even greater, with the exception perhaps of some particular judges attached to the raison d’état and acting as assistants to military investigators. Effective judiciary collaboration in term of fight against terrorism that could have developed following September 11 2001 has been dismissed by the American sovereign thesis and the technical difficulties of bringing closer the Anglo-American procedures and the procedures of continental Europe. Americans have refused to create a judicial network that could put pressure on them and have preferred the route of the extraordinary, only making very small concessions regarding the death penalty for suspects originating from some of the member states of the European Union held in Guantanamo Bay (mainly the UK prisoners) or imprisoned in the US as it is the case of Moussaoui, the French so-called 20th member of Al Qaeda bombing. They have preferred a policy in which the courts of justice become the adjunct of military forces and of the administration. Internal discussions in the European Union regarding Eurojust, the European arrest warrant and especially the adoption of a common or more or less convergent ‘corpus juris’ have been affected by this policy stained with unilateralism and sometimes used by some of the countries of the European Union against others, for reasons other than the fight against terrorism, and which are more related to opposition to the phenomenon of convergence of criminal law.
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Intelligence services have of course more interests to present the anti-terrorist collaboration post-September 11 as a success. While they were the first to be exposed due to their lack of clarity during the two months that followed September 11, they have managed to re-establish themselves and to request more means in the form of more staff and technology, as well as less judiciary and legal constraints on their activities. Remote surveillance has been widely provided, whether one refers to national or wired tapping of the Internet or the telephone. They have also the possibility to pay informers during undercover operations without prior authorisation and they have been ‘exempted’ from a lot of judiciary constraint in many countries. The meetings of different Western intelligence services have been intensified, and here some transnational links have been strengthened. Some sensitive information is now flowing. But if one believes Stella Rimington’s book Open Secret, this has hardly been recent.31 According to one of our interviews, they have instead extended a network working between the ‘Commonwealth and the US’ to some countries on continental Europe including France and Germany, despite the position of those countries against the war in Iraq; the paradox is that for example, the contacts between the DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, the French intelligence service equivalent to MI5) and the American services have strengthened, even when political divergences were becoming more apparent. The rather intense participation of the American Department of Defense in the fight against terrorism in order to block the external expansion of the Homeland Security Department and to defend its prerogatives against a State Department with different policies, has also played a key role in the dynamics that followed September 11. American strategists have developed and adapted the concepts issued from the theory of low intensity conflicts to the war against terrorism by advocating anticipation regarding the opponents actions. They have strongly insisted on a vision of terrorism using weapons of mass destruction while in practice – it is important to remember against the mantra of the media – the procedures used on September 11 by the clandestine organisation, despite killing many persons, has combined two traditional repertoires, the one of suicide attacks (like the trucks in the barracks in Lebanon) and the other involving (hijacking of) planes. It is the argument of the imminence and danger of the attack that justifies in their eyes a pre-emptive defence, because of the irreparable character of the action, it justifies the position of ‘not waiting until it is too late’ as a website showing the twin towers and a nuclear mushroom cloud tries to suggest. It is the heart of the question about probability in the future and anticipation as fiction, which is at stake. The belief of the imminent danger of the Apocalypse justifies at the same time ‘proactive’ policing actions, ‘pre-emptive’ military strikes, ‘administrative and exceptional justice’, where anticipations of behaviour are considered as a sufficient element to act. The decisions of those deciding are then based upon the ‘beliefs’ they have in a rush and not upon wisely considered actions backed up by facts. This anticipation or ‘astrological’ dimension lies within the present tension regarding the fight against terrorism and its lawfulness. If the Afghanistan war
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has already provoked reactions regarding the way it has been led, the pointless distinctions between prisoners of war and enemy combatants, i.e. terrorists, sent to Guantanamo Bay, the war in Iraq presents the problem of political decisions made on unconfirmed information due to lack of time and upon the basis of fear of acting too late when confronted with a serious but randomised threat, in which the capacity of ‘stealth’ (in the same way as a stealth aircraft) is great. One has the opportunity to see with the Dr Kelly affair and the Hutton enquiry in the UK how decision-making is founded less and less on facts but on beliefs, and how this ends up in a competition among political figures, the media and intelligence services in order to find out who holds the truth, not only in a given moment but the other way round, once the temporality of the chain of causality has been reconstructed. To put it differently and more simply: there are not, despite the expectation of American strategists, any ways to foresee the future and to structure it as one would like to. It is not because people believe in the existence of weapons of mass destruction ready to be used and capable of striking in 45 minutes that they necessarily exist as such in that moment X, even if Iraqi plans anticipating such usage had to be found. The phantasm of the virtualisation of the real, of the anticipation of action turns into the phantasm of fiction. The film Minority Report has undoubtedly had enormous success because it recalls this ambiguity, this uncertainty of political security and more particularly of contemporary anti-terrorist policies to try to foresee the future. Of course one could say that it is much easier being a detective after the fact, or being the ‘firemen of the crime’, than being a ‘profiler’, who anticipates before the act of who is potentially the author of an offence and what will be its actions in the future. But the second job is still a science fiction one with no credentials. One could say of course that this evolution is only the fault of the transformation of violence, but it is also the fault of this will to master the world, to control every part of it and to believe that technology can do it. The will to control time and space, present and future, here and there, has an effect that goes beyond anti-terrorist policies; it creates a powerful creation mixture of fiction and reality, of virtual and actual which merge their boundaries and introduce fiction into reality for the profiling as well as it de-realised the violence of the State and of the clandestine organisation. The terrorist attacks of September 11 have now become a film on video/DVD that is sold alongside other Hollywood films about disasters, by the same companies and using the same means. The victims have become ir-reals or hyper-reals, the enemies surreal, and the potential enemies are virtually present everywhere at every moment. As Zizek has said in his work dedicated to September 11, Welcome to the Desert of the Real.32 But against its disenchanted view, it is the responsibility of the judiciary police services and of the judges, as well as groups of the civil society to resist to this phantasm, to struggle for rights and civil liberties and to counterbalance, wherever possible, this tendency to confuse knowledge of past, present and future, to transform questions of fact into questions of belief and to fictionalise the world.
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Notes 1 Michel Foucault, François Ewald, Alessandro Fontana, Valerio Marchetti and Antonella Salomoni, Les Anormaux: Cours Au Collège De France (1974–1975), Hautes études, Paris: Gallimard: Seuil, 1999. 2 E. P. Reubens, ‘Illegal immigration and the Mexican economy’, Challenge, 1978/21: 13–19; H. W. Herzog Jr. and A. M. Schlottmann, ‘Labor force migration and allocative efficiency in the United States: the roles of information and psychic costs’, Economic Inquiry, 1981/19: 17; M. J. Mandel, and C. Farrell, ‘The price of open arms’, Business Week, 1993: 4; W. Spain, ‘Heads in the sand’, Computerworld, 1995/29: 1; W. J. Carrington, E. Detragiache and T. Vishwanath, ‘Migration with endogenous moving costs’, American Economic Review, 1996/86: 22; B. R. Chiswick, ‘Immigration policy and immigrant quality: Are immigrants favorably self-selected?’, American Economic Review, 1999/89: 5; J. A. Phillips and D. S. Massey, ‘The new labor market: Immigrants and wages after IRCA’, Demography, 1999/36: 14; E. Weinstein, ‘Migration for the benefit of all: Towards a new paradigm for economic immigration’, International Labour Review, 2002/141: 225–252. In France the publications of INSEE on this theme from 1983. 3 S. Brookes, ‘Migrant workers are changing the face of Europe’, Europe, 1986: 4; P. Stuart, ‘A better future for migrant workers’, Personnel Journal, 1992/71: 10; I. Galceran and J. Berry, ‘A new world of consumers’, American Demographics, 1995/17: 7. For a report of the debate in France, see Rémy Leveau and Gilles Kepel, Les musulmans dans la société française, Paris: PFNSP, 1988. See also the publications of the multidisciplinary network Migrinter. 4 L. Southwick Jr., ‘Public welfare programs and recipient migration’, Growth & Change, 1981/12: 11; S. Brookes, ‘Migrant workers are changing the face of Europe’, Europe, 1986: 4; P. Stuart, ‘A better future for migrant workers’, Personnel Journal, 1992/71: 10; G. J. Borjas and S. J. Trejo, ‘National origin and immigrant welfare recipiency’, Journal of Public Economics, 1993/50: 20; I. Galceran and J. Berry, ‘A new world of consumers’, American Demographics, 1995/17: 7; F. H. Buckley, ‘The political economy of immigration policies’, International Review of Law & Economics, 1996/16: 19; H.-W. Sinn, ‘EU enlargement and the future of the welfare state’, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 2002/49: 104–115. J. Citrin et al., ‘Public opinion toward immigration reform: the role of economic motivations’, The Journal of Politics, 1997, no. 3, p. 858–881. See also the publication of Moulier Boutang in France: Lago de Dal, NonPersone. L’esclusione dei migranti in una società globale, Milano: Feltrinelli, 1999; Salvatore Palidda, Polizia post moderna, Milano: Feltrinelli, 2001; S. Palidda, ‘La construction sociale de la déviance et de la criminalité parmi les immigrés. Le cas italien’, in S. Palidda (ed.), Délit d’immigration, COST A2 Migrations, Bruxelles: Commission Européenne, 1997, p. 231–266; C. de Butterwegge, ‘Mass media, immigrants and racism in Germany. A contribution to an ongoing debate’, Communications, 1996, no. 2, p. 203–220. 5 D. Seligman, ‘Illegals with legal rights’, Forbes, 2002: 128; T. W. Smith, ‘The pollsreview: The Muslim population of the United States: The methodology of estimates’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 2002/66: 404–417; J. Chapman and J. Bernstein, ‘Immigration and poverty: How are they linked?’, Monthly Labor Review, 2003: 10; M. Lee, ‘Making the scene’, Business Mexico, 2003/13: 30–32. See also the publication of Anastasia Tsoukala, ‘Le contrôle de l’immigration en Grèce dans les années quatrevingt-dix’, Cultures & Conflits, 1997, no. 26/27, p. 51–72. 6 S. Brookes, ‘Migrant workers are changing the face of Europe’, Europe, 1986: 4; B. Sharkey, ‘TV news on trial’, Mediaweek, 1997/7: 3. T. van Dijk, Elite Discourse and Racism, Newbury Park, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993. See also the publications on the Front National by CEVIPOF, particularly the studies of Pascal Perrineau and Nona Mayer.
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7 T. W. Smith, ‘The polls-review: The Muslim population of the United States: The methodology of estimates’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 2002/66: 404–417. P. Bonditti, L’anti-terrorisme aux Etats-Unis, de la menace soviétique aux Rogue States, la construction de l’ennemi terroriste depuis 1980, Paris, 2001; C. J. Calhoun, P. Price and A. S. Timmer, Understanding September 11, New York: New Press: Distributed by W.W. Norton, 2002; E. Hershberg and K. W. Moore, Critical Views of September 11: Analyses from Around the World, New York: New Press, 2002. See also the publication by Jocelyne Cesari, Faut-il avoir peur de l’islam?, Paris: Presses de sciences Po, 1997; Jocelyne Cesari, ‘L’Islam dans l’immigration: un bilan de la recherche’, La Pensée, no. 299, Paris 2002. 8 Murray J. Edelman, Pièces et règles du jeu politique, Paris: Seuil, 1991, 249 p.; La couleur des idées, transl. of Constructing the Political Spectacle, ‘some premises about politics: the pervasiveness of literacy, television, and radio in the industrialized world makes frequent reports of political news available to most of the population, a marked change from the situation that prevailed until approximately the Second World War … what are the implications for democratic theory? There is a conventional answer: citizens who are informed can more effectively protect and promote their own interests and the public interest. That response takes for granted a world of facts that have a determinable meaning and a world of people who react rationally to the facts they know. In politics, neither premise is tenable … The spectacle constituted by news reporting continuously constructs and reconstructs social problem, crises, enemies and leaders and so creates a succession of threats and reassurances’, p. 1. 9 Murray J. Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 10 See the issue of Cultures et Conflits, ‘L’ennemi intérieur, edited by Gabriel Peries and Ayse Ceyhan, http://www.conflits.org. 11 Régis Debray, Tous azimut, Paris: Fondation pour les études de défense nationale, 1991. 12 Concerning this genealogy of (in)securitisation practices, see Didier Bigo, Guerre, crime, sécurité intérieure et extérieure, Habilitation IEP Septembre 2002, Paris, L Harmattan, forthcoming, 2005. See also Didier Bigo, ‘Sécurité et immigration: vers une gouvernementalité par l’inquiétude?’, Cultures & Conflits, 1998, no. 31–32, p. 13–38, translated into English in Alternatives, vol. 27, Feb. 2002. Cf. M. O. Heisler, ‘The transnational nexus of security and migration’, in D. Bigo and E. Guild, Europe as Frontier: Freedom and Control Beyond Borders, Ashgate, 2003. J. Huysmans, ‘Migrants as a security problem: dangers of securitizing societal issues’, in R. Miles and D. Thränhardt (eds), Migration and European Integration. The Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion, London: Pinter, 1995, p. 53–72; L. Wacquant, ‘Des ennemis commodes’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 1999, no. 129, p. 63–67. 13 Beck, Ulrich, ‘The Terrorist Threat: World Risk Society Revisited’, Theory, Culture and Society, 19, the permanent state of emergency, 2002, no. 4: 39–55 14 James Steinberg, ‘Counterterrorism, a new organizing principle for American national security’, The Brookings Review, Summer, 2002; M. Hiebert, ‘The cost of security’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 2002/165: 18–19; R. D. Lamm, ‘Terrorism and immigration: We need a border’, Vital Speeches of the Day, 2002/68: 298–300; G. Staple, ‘The First Word: Anti-terrorist measures’, Accountancy, 2002/129: 1; D. Verton, ‘Database woes thwart counterterrorism work’, Computerworld, 2002/36: 14; L. Volpp, ‘The citizen and the terrorist’, UCLA Law Review, 2002/49: 1575–1600; Anonymous, ‘United States: A home at last, but not for many; Refugee policy’, Economist, 2003/367: 29–32; Anonymous, ‘Britain: Coming Quietly; Freedom and antiterrorism’, Economist, 2003/366: 51–52; R. Buderi, ‘Technological McCarthyism’, Technology Review, 2003/106: 8. 15 Yann Poincignon, La lutte contre le terrorisme en Europe, le cas de l’extension à la sureté des trannsports aériens, Paris, 2002; Anonymous, ‘Attacks Highlight Faults In Airport Security’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 2001/155: 54–55; A. Zuckerman and R.
From Foreigners to ‘Abnormal Aliens’
16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30 31 32
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McLymont, ‘Crossing the line’, World Trade, 2002/15: 38–40; N. Basta, ‘Getting serious about transportation security’, Chemical Week, 2003/165: 21–29. P. Bonditti, L’anti-terrorisme aux Etats-Unis, de la menace soviétique aux Rogue States, la construction de l’ennemi terroriste depuis 1980, Paris, 2001. S. Harris, ‘Detecting the threat’, Government Executive, 2002/34: 51–58; L. S. Strickland and J. Willard, ‘Re-engineering the immigration system: A case for data mining and information assurance to enhance homeland security – part I: Identifying the current problems’, Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 2002/29: 16–21; T. Anderson, ‘US Congressional legislation’, Security Management, 2003/47: 99–105. B. Olchanski, Secret Trials and Executions, Military Tribunals and the Threat to Democracy, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002. See Annex 1. E. Guild, E. Brouwer and P. Catz, Immigration, Asylum and Terrorism: A Changing Dynamic in European Law, Nijmegen: CMR, 2003. See also the website ELISE www.eliseconsortium.org. See Olivier Roy justifying the war in Afghanistan. À contrario Gilles Dorronsoro. Pierre Hassner and Justin Vaïsse, ‘Washington et le monde, dilemmes d’une superpuissance’, CERI autrement 2003. Gabriel Peries and Ayce Ceyhan, ‘L’ennemi Intérieur une construction discursive et politique’, Cultures et Conflits, l’ennemi intérieur, no. 43 2/2001, Paris: L’Harmattan, http:://www.conflits.org/ article.php3?id_article=341. See Michel Foucault, note 1. Michael Paul Rogin and NetLibrary Inc., Ronald Reagan, the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology, ed. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1988. Laurie Goodstein, Sarah Kershaw and Neil A. Lewis, ‘Army chaplain in detention sought to teach about Islam’, New York Times, 030925, A1. See the recent play called Homeland Security by Stuart Flack, directed by Sandy Shinner. In the US many editorials of the New York Times are just justifications of the so-called improvement of the collaboration between polices, Fox Tv is even more a caricature. In France, Guillaume Dasquié in Les nouveaux pouvoirs, Flammarion 2003 and in its interview at France info of September 11 2003, ‘Comment a évolué la lutte contre le terrorisme depuis le 11 septembre 2001?’, has also jumped on this allegory of the common plot and the necessity of shared gathering intelligence. Interviews made possible through a research programme sponsored by the European Commission: ELISE. For more details see ELISE (European Liberty and Security) website www.eliseconsortium. org. For a detailed analysis of this topic, see Cultures et Conflits, ‘Défense et identités, un contexte sécuritaire global’, no. 44, 1, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2002, website www.conflits.org. About Echelon and the FBI-Europe agreement see the detailed analysis of Tony Bunyan, website: www.statewatch.org. Stella Remington, Open Secrets, London: Penguin, 2001. S. Zizek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, London: Verso Pluto Press, 2002.
5
Immigrants and the Host Polity Immigrant Voters as an Electoral Counterweight to Extreme Right Parties Jeannette Money
Research on various dimensions of immigration has produced a growing body of accepted knowledge. One area, however, remains understudied: the impact of immigrants on the host polity and, in particular, the impact of immigrant voters.1 This chapter seeks to bridge this gap by examining immigrant electoral participation, in light of the rise and continued electoral strength of extreme right parties in many advanced, industrial countries. The basic thesis of this chapter is that immigrant voters have a political impact only when they are ‘politically significant’. The conditions that generate political significance include the size of the immigrant stream, the access of immigrants to the vote, their degree of politicization, and their ability to act as swing voters. In advanced market economy countries in the twenty-first century, these conditions are met infrequently, and primarily at the local level, if at all. The main impact of immigrant voters, where it is apparent, is to serve as a counterweight to racist, xenophobic groups in the host society. Because there is no accepted body of theory on immigrant electoral participation, I begin with the literature on the extreme right and demonstrate that the picture is incomplete without incorporating immigrant voters into the equation. I then theorize about the conditions under which immigrant voters are able to constrain the rise of the extreme right. This is followed by a comparative analysis of extreme right parties in France and Australia. Policy implications of this research are drawn out in the Conclusion.
The Empirical Puzzle Why has support for extreme right parties varied so much across advanced market economy countries? In Europe, France is an example of a country with sustained electoral support for the Front National, an anti-immigrant party generally labelled as extreme right. In contrast, Britain has experienced only fleeting and nominal success for extreme right parties, including some local electoral success of the British National Front in the mid-1970s. Germany, on the other hand, has seen the continued presence of extreme right parties but none
Immigrants and the Host Polity 83 that has breeched the 5 per cent electoral threshold. In the United States, third parties experience only episodic success, despite regular efforts to organize. In Australia, the One Nation Party, also labelled extreme right, saw ephemeral success in the late 1990s. This is only a sample of the varied fortunes of extreme right parties in advanced market economy countries and begs the question of why they meet different levels of electoral success. One answer, of course, is that the parties themselves differ widely in their electoral platforms and appeals. Although the labels attached to similar parties vary – ‘radical right-wing populism’, the ‘new radical right’, or just ‘extreme right’ – these parties do have varied positions on economic policy, a main component of any party’s electoral platform. But, regardless of their appeal to market globalism or inward looking autarky, their economic policy prescriptions rarely, if ever, fall outside the mainstream political debate. The common element and that which locates these parties on the extreme right of the political spectrum, as well as generates concern about their success, is their ethnocentric, xenophobic authoritarianism, accompanied by attacks, both verbal and physical, on immigrants and other minorities. Thus, the parties have a common platform that is the source of a common ‘extremist’ label and that provides their main electoral appeal. A common platform, however, suggests uniform levels of success rather than the observed variation across countries, and cannot serve as a main explanatory variable. The rise of right-wing extremism in advanced market-economy countries has generated research into the causes of success.2 Analyses are usually divided into two competing explanations. The first emphasizes the changing socio-economic environment that generates insecurity among specific segments of the population. From this perspective, ‘[l]abor market dualization and the individualization of risks and opportunities have resulted in increased insecurity’.3 Those who experience this insecurity tend to support electorally the extreme right parties. Alternatively, analysts point to structural changes in the party system and the decline of parties in Europe as the trigger for the growing electoral support for right-wing extremists. Thus, ‘the disintegration of majority parties offered a political vacuum into which right-wing parties have swiftly moved since the early 1980s’.4 The most fully elaborated examination of right-wing parties incorporates both socio-economic and institutional changes into the analysis. Kitschelt points to underlying structural change in market economies to explain the shift in voter preferences.5 According to this analysis, in the first two decades following the Second World War, voter preferences reflected a primary conflict over the organization of the economy and the distribution of wealth. Kitschelt argues that a second political dimension subsequently emerged, a dimension that incorporates authoritarianism and ethnocentrism. As a result, the new dominant dimension of political choice in advanced, market economy countries is anchored at one end of the political spectrum by a programme that combines economic redistribution with libertarianism – the left – while the other end represents free market liberalism combined with a nationalistic authoritarianism – the right.
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This underlying shift in voter preferences triggers an opportunity for the entry of extreme right (and extreme left) parties. But the electoral success of these parties depends not only on an underlying change in societal preferences; party strategies are important as well. If the moderate, mainstream parties of the right (and left) converge towards the median voter, a political space is opened for a right (and left) wing electoral appeal. But the picture is yet more complicated. The extreme parties themselves may fail to offer an appropriately appealing platform and therefore miss the electoral market, even when the moderate parties do not incorporate the voters’ new preferences. According to Kitschelt, the ‘ideal’ extreme right programme that will successfully attract ongoing electoral support combines a nationalistic, xenophobic, authoritarianism with free market liberalism. There are two aspects of this literature that leave it open to criticism. First, even if we accept a great deal of Kitschelt’s argument, his theory contains a lacuna: why is it that some mainstream parties of the right (and left) converge towards the median voter, opening a political space for a xenophobic appeal whereas others diverge from the median voter in an effort to capture voters on the fringes? Second, there is selection bias in the cases employed to evaluate the models. All refer to the extreme right in Western Europe.6 But there is nothing particularly unique about economic insecurity and party strategies in Europe. The focus on Western Europe suggests an implicit hypothesis that extreme right parties only thrive in the long-standing, ethnically based nation-states of Europe and can be avoided in the ‘settler’ states of the new world – Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand – whose history is composed of immigrant flows. Both types of states have nativist periods but European nations seem to sustain anti-immigrant extreme right parties to a greater extent. By excluding an explicit comparison to the ‘settler’ states, analysts have overlooked an important component of the extreme right puzzle, that is, the opposition to the extreme right as well as its support. Settler states are distinctive in that they tend to facilitate the political incorporation of immigrants through naturalization and jus soli laws that incorporate the children of immigrants as citizens. Immigrants can then act as an electoral counterweight to extreme right parties. Immigrant voters create electoral incentives for mainstream parties to discredit anti-immigrant appeals, thereby undermining the political support for extreme right parties. However, the distinction should not be ethnic versus settler state. If immigrant electoral participation is critical to understanding the electoral success of extreme right parties, states should be categorized by the degree to which immigrants are incorporated politically.
The Theory The theoretical framework I propose has two distinct but related dimensions. The first deals with the electoral incentives for mainstream parties to craft the legitimate parameters of political debate by excluding xenophobic and/or racist rhetoric. The second focuses on the extreme right’s electoral appeal.
Immigrants and the Host Polity 85 Constraints on mainstream parties If the mainstream parties can be punished electorally by voters for using derogatory language and for pursing discriminatory policies towards immigrants and minorities, then these electoral incentives create constraints on the ability of mainstream parties to respond to the underlying shift in voter preferences. There are four conditions that affect the ability of voters to play this role: • • • •
the size of the group undertaking this role; their ability to participate in the political system; their degree of politicization; and their ability to act as swing voters.
Although there are many groups that may oppose the extreme right (note that 82 per cent of the French voted against the leader of the Front National, JeanMarie Le Pen, in the second round of the French presidential elections of 2002), I focus here on immigrants as one group, among others, that may play a role in constraining anti-immigrant sentiment. Size of the group The immigrant population is constructed through a stream of immigrants entering and remaining in the host country. Thus, the demand for, rules governing entrance of, and the supply of immigrants all play a role in determining the size of the immigrant stock. For OECD countries, the range varies from 1.2 per cent in Japan to 21.1 per cent in Australia.7 Nowhere are immigrants a majority in the host country.8 None the less, immigrants need not be a majority to be politically important. Even small groups of immigrants may affect political outcomes if they are able to swing electoral outcomes (see below on ability of immigrants to act as swing voters). Ability to participate in the political system Non-citizens are normally banned from participation in the host polity.9 Therefore, naturalization rules are important to the equation of immigrant electoral impact. The most basic distinction is between countries governed by jus sanguinis – the acquisition of citizenship through the citizenship of the parents – or jus soli – the acquisition of citizenship through birth in the territory. Generally, in jus sanguinis countries, the foreign population remains foreign, as foreign citizenship is passed from the immigrant parents to their children even if they are born in the host country. Naturalization remains the only route to citizenship and, hence, participation in the host polity. Naturalization can be either difficult or easy.10 In jus soli countries, children of immigrants become citizens at birth, thereby opening a second door to immigrant electoral participation, beyond the door of naturalization.11 Thus, electoral participation is only open to that part of the immigrant stock that chooses to become a citizen
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of the host country and meets the host country’s requirements for attaining that status. Degree of politicization Once immigrants have become citizens, they must decide to participate in the electoral system. A few advanced market economy countries have automatic registration and mandatory voting, making the degree of immigrant politicization a moot issue. Most, however, require the immigrant to take positive steps, even subsequent to naturalization, to participate in the political system. Existent studies of immigrant electoral behaviour indicate that immigrants generally register and turnout at lower rates than the citizen population.12 Moreover, immigrants tend not to form their own political parties but to adhere to established political parties.13 Ability to act as swing voters The host country system controls both immigrant streams and the ability of immigrants to become members of the host polity. The immigrants themselves decide to naturalize and participate in the host polity. But the equation is not complete without an understanding of how immigrant votes are aggregated in the host polity.14 The location of immigrant voters, electoral rules and competitiveness of elections are all important in determining whether immigrants can affect political outcomes. These variables determine whether immigrants present an electoral threat by shifting electoral support if their preferences are ignored. It is widely known that immigrant communities tend to be geographically concentrated. So even if the immigrant vote is not large on a national level, it could be much larger and more significant on a local or a regional level. The impact of immigrants’ geographic concentration may be enhanced or diminished by national electoral rules. Single member constituencies tend to enhance the power of geographically concentrated groups whereas systems of proportional representation facilitate aggregation of geographically dispersed groups. Thus, the potential for immigrant block voting to have an effect is larger in single member constituency systems. Finally, the competitiveness of elections in those localities where immigrants are concentrated also affects immigrants’ political significance. In safe electoral constituencies, immigrants have little leverage over politicians. But where electoral margins are narrow, immigrants are likely to have more political leverage. All told, there are substantial barriers to immigrants having an electoral impact in the host polity. None the less, immigrants are one group with the potential to generate political incentives for mainstream parties to diminish their xenophobic or racist rhetoric. Even small groups of immigrants may be effective electorally if they are geographically concentrated, if the electoral system favours their representation, if the balance of power is evenly divided and if they can threaten electoral defection if their preferences are ignored. In these cases, immigrants may act to constrain mainstream political parties.
Immigrants and the Host Polity 87 Constraints on extreme right parties If immigrants act to constrain mainstream political parties, no such constraints would seem plausible for the right-wing parties themselves. After all, these parties are not trying to attract minority and immigrant voters. There are two plausible explanations for the connection between the mainstream parties’ electoral incentive structures and the electoral support for right-wing parties. The first suggests that, in the absence of adequate information, the mainstream political parties frame voters’ understanding of the issue. The second suggests that these same parties, by strategically selecting the political dimension that avoids immigrant voter punishment, prevent extremist parties from appealing to the voters’ xenophobia and racism for electoral support. The first explanation begins with the assumption that most voters have inadequate information to evaluate policy alternatives. In the absence of information, rational voters take short cuts to help them decide what position to support politically. One possible short cut is to take cues or signals from political insiders, that is, from members of parliament who do have the appropriate insider information and expertise.15 This advice need not be uniform across the political spectrum. Voters look to those parliamentarians who are sympathetic to their broader political beliefs as signallers of appropriate policy positions. Where mainstream parties of both the left and the right are constrained by immigrant voters, they tend to define issues in terms of economic policy, poverty, and equality of opportunity and to avoid racist, xenophobic overtones. Under these circumstances, the extremist party’s analysis does not provide an appropriate solution and voters do not support this party electorally. But when even one mainstream party is unconstrained by immigrant voters, when it stands to gain by playing the xenophobic, racist card, then these cues by mainstream party(ies) legitimate the extremist rhetoric, thus making sense of that party’s xenophobic platform and enhancing its electoral appeal.16 An alternative explanation of the connection between the mainstream parties’ electoral incentives and extreme right electoral support focuses on the distribution of voters on two separate issue dimensions. According to the electoral incentive system for mainstream parties set out above, both the parties of the left and those of the right choose to define the political debate on the economic dimension as opposed to the xenophobic dimension, in order to avoid punishment by the immigrant voters. Defining the issue along a single dimension prevents the extremist party’s platform from providing an appropriate response. This selection of issue dimensions and its effect on voter choice is illustrated in Figure 5.1. Voter A is closest on the vertical (Cosmopolitanism-Xenophobia) dimension to the extremist party; if the election is defined in these terms, the voter will choose the extremist party. If, however, the mainstream parties are able to redefine the terms of the electoral debate to the horizontal (Economic) dimension, then the mainstream parties (labelled ‘Left Party’ and ‘Right Party’ in Figure 5.1) both provide positions that are closer to those of the voter. In William Riker’s words, the mainstream parties ‘fix dimensionality’ along the dimension that assures them the most electoral support.17
88 Political and Legal Security High Extreme Right Party
Xenophobic Dimension
Voter A
Left Party
Right Party
Low Left
Right Economic Dimension
Figure 5.1 Fixing the dimensionality of the electoral contest
These two alternative explanations produce the same hypothesis regarding extremist support and may work together. The first suggests the malleability of voter preferences; because mainstream parties define the political debate in nonxenophobic terms, voters do not form preferences to which extremist parties can appeal. The second assumes that voter preferences are fixed; the mainstream parties fix the electoral debate on a dimension that prevents a second xenophobic, racist dimension from becoming part of the debate. In more formal terms, extremist electoral support is hypothesized to be a function of both support for and opposition to a xenophobic platform.
The Evidence A comparison of France and Australia permits an evaluation of the hypotheses proposed above because the two countries vary substantially on independent variables: stocks of foreigners; ease of naturalization; degree of politicization; and ability to act as swing voters. Stocks of foreign population France and Australia have distinctive immigration histories.18 Because of slow demographic growth, France has long been a country of immigration, in contrast to many European countries with histories of emigration. Initially, immigrants came from other European countries, Belgium, Italy and Poland, for example. Immigration from Algeria began in the colonial period and was followed, in the post-Second World War period, by immigration from the Mediterranean more broadly. Yet, despite its relative openness, France’s immigrant population numbers less than 7 per cent of the population. Australia is a nation of immigrants. Less than 2 per cent of the population is aboriginal. Yet, to a larger extent than any advanced market economy country, it remains a nation of immigration. The Second World War generated concerns over Japanese invasion and a perceived inability to defend the lightly populated
Immigrants and the Host Polity 89 19
Table 5.1 Stocks of Immigrant Population AUSTRALIA*
1975 1982 1986 1990 1991 1996
Percent of population
3, 247.4
20.8
3,753.3 3,908.3
22.3 21.1
FRANCE**
Percent of population
3,442.4 3,714.2
6.5 6.8
3,596.6
6.3
*Stock of foreign-born population, census results of 1986, 1991, and 1996. **Stock of foreign population from the population censuses of 1975, 1982, and 1990
continent. Therefore, in the immediate post-war period, Australia embarked on a period of demographic growth fuelled by high birth rates and massive immigration intakes. Although the initial intakes of 2 per cent of the population were quickly reduced to 1 per cent and then further to less than one half of one percent, Australia continues to maintain a relatively open immigration regime. More than 20 per cent of the Australian population are foreign born. Table 5.1 presents stocks of the immigrant population in France and Australia. These are the individuals that have the potential to play a role in the host country’s political system. Ease of naturalization France is not on the extreme end of the jus sanguinis spectrum but does have more elements of jus sanguinis than does Australia. In France, citizenship is passed through the parent. Children of French citizens, born in France or elsewhere, are French citizens; children of foreigners born in France acquire their parents’ citizenship. However, children of foreigners born in France automatically acquire French citizenship on their 18th birthday unless they specifically reject French citizenship.20 And, the children of foreigners who were also born in France acquire French citizenship at birth (double jus soli). So, unlike some jus sanguinis countries, if France completely stopped the intake of foreigners, ultimately the ‘foreign population’ would become French within two generations. Naturalization is easier than in Germany but more difficult than in Australia. It requires five years’ legal residence, attestation of good character, absence of criminal conviction, knowledge of the French language, integration into the community, and good health. After citizenship is granted, there is an additional period of five years before political rights can be exercised.21 Australia is much closer to the jus soli end of the spectrum. Australia is characterized by conditional jus soli, that is, children born in Australia to foreign parents become Australian citizens at birth, provided that their parents are legal resident aliens. If Australia completely stopped the intake of foreigners, the ‘foreign population’ would disappear within a single generation. Naturalization is easier
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than in France, requiring only two years’ residence; the other criteria are almost identical to the French requirements. Moreover, Australia only admits for permanent entry individuals who intend to reside permanently in Australia, creating an ethos of integration in the immigrant population.22 The differences in naturalization legislation are apparent in the rates of naturalization. In Table 5.2, the number of naturalizations and naturalization rates are presented for France and Australia. For France, the first figure is comparable to Australian naturalization rates because it excludes the automatic naturalization of 18 year olds. Naturalization rates were generally twice as high in Table 5.2 Acquisition of Nationality 1989–1999 FRANCE a
Percentage of Populationb
Naturalization Rate c
23
AUSTRALIA
Percenaget of population
Naturalization rate
1989
49,330 82,000
0.09 0.15
1.36 2.27
1990
54,366 88,500
0.09 0.15
1.51 2.46
127,857
0.77
3.50
1991
59,655 95,500
0.10 0.17
1.66 2.66
118,510
0.70
3.15
1992
59,246 95,300
0.10 0.17
1.66 2.67
125,158
0.73
3.30
1993
60,007 95,500
0.10 0.17
1.69 2.69
122,085
0.71
3.19
1994
93,082 126,337
0.16 0.22
2.63 3.57
112,186
0.64
2.91
1995
61,884 92,410
0.10 0.16
1.75 2.62
114,757
0.65
2.96
1996
79,978 109,823
0.14 0.19
2.28 3.13
111,637
0.62
2.85
1997
83,676 116,194
0.14 0.20
2.39 3.41
108,266
0.59
2.74
1998
81,912 122,261
0.14 0.20
2.35 3.51
112,343
0.61
2.82
76,474
0.41
1.91
1999 a
The first figure excludes people automatically acquiring French nationality upon reaching legal majority (this procedure was in effect until 1993) as well as the number of people born in France to foreign parents who declared their intention to become French in accordance with the legislation of 22 July 1993. The second figure includes estimates of these individuals. b Percentage of population is calculated by dividing the number of naturalizations by the population. c Naturalization rate is calculated by dividing the number of naturalizations by the stock of foreign population or foreign-born population. Population and stocks of foreign or foreign-born population were interpolated as necessary.
Immigrants and the Host Polity 91 Australia as in France in the early part of the 1990s; towards the end of the decade, French naturalization rates begin to converge with Australian rates. When we count the percentage of individuals who can participate in the political system, it is several times higher in Australia than in France because both the stock of immigrants and the rates of naturalization are higher. Every year in Australia, around 0.6 per cent of the population becomes newly enfranchised; that number is only around 0.1 per cent in France. Degree of politicization Immigrants in Australia, once they become citizens, are required to participate through automatic voter registration and mandatory electoral participation. In France, evidence suggests that even where immigrants (or the children of immigrants) are citizens, they turn out to vote in fewer numbers than the host population.24 Ability to act as swing voters In Australia, immigrants are able to act as swing voters to a much larger extent than in France. The immigrant stock and, hence, the immigrant citizen population are larger in Australia than in France. This presence is complemented by the immigrants’ ability to threaten effectively to desert mainstream political parties that ignore their preferences. This is because Australia admitted an immigrant stream that varied in socio-economic terms as well as ethnic terms.25
The Analysis The ultimate test of immigrant electoral influence is the ability of immigrants to dampen electoral support for extreme right parties. The hypotheses presented above suggest that the extreme right vote is smallest in electoral constituencies where immigrants are politically significant. The dependent variable for Australia is the vote for the One Nation Party (ONP) in the 1998 federal election; for France it is the vote for the Front National in the 1993 legislative elections. The political significance of immigrant voters is operationalized by dividing the immigrant population (as a percentage of the total population) in each constituency by the electoral margin, that is, the percentage of the vote that must shift in order to change the electoral outcome between parties.26 For France, the actual number of naturalized citizens is employed; in Australia, the number of immigrants is employed. A score of 1 indicates that the migrant population is equal to the margin of the population necessary to shift electoral success from one party to the other. The larger the immigrants’ political significance, the smaller the predicted extreme right vote. A number of other variables are included in the ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression, drawn from the hypotheses presented here and from the literature analysing extreme right support. For Australia, the party of the left, the
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Australian Labour Party (ALP), was consistent in signalling to its voters that the One Nation Party programme was illegitimate and campaigned on other issues. Therefore a negative relationship is anticipated between the ONP vote and an ALP incumbent. The literature on extreme-right parties suggests that economic insecurity is a factor contributing to extreme right support along with an authoritarian, racist, xenophobic dimension.27 I created a variable capturing both dimensions by multiplying the level of unemployment in each constituency by the percentage of the population that is aboriginal. This is labelled ‘anti-aboriginal sentiment’.28 In Australia, the ONP’s support has been drawn from individuals with low levels of education. Therefore, we should see a larger ONP vote in constituencies with high proportions of early school leavers. As ONP leader and centre of media attention, Pauline Hanson is expected to receive more votes than the average ONP candidate. Queensland is Pauline Hanson’s home state and original political base. It is the state in which she has received media attention over the longest period of time. Therefore I anticipate a positive relationship between Queensland constituencies and the ONP vote. Finally, in nine electoral constituencies, the ONP failed to nominate a candidate. Of necessity, we would anticipate a zero vote in constituencies that lacked an ONP candidate. In France, I expect a similar relationship between economic insecurity, xenophobia and extreme right support. As in the case of Australia, to test this hypothesis, I created an ‘anti-immigrant’ variable by multiplying the percentage of immigrants by the level of unemployment. I also created a leadership variable, anticipating that party leaders, including the head of the party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, would receive more publicity and more support than the average Front National candidate. I also anticipate greater support in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, Le Pen’s political base of support. And finally, I anticipate less support for the Front National in Corsica, where the most important issue is not immigration but regional autonomy, as reflected in high levels of support for Corsican nationalists. The summary statistics for the Australian analysis are presented in Table 5.3. The average ONP vote by constituency is 8.5 per cent, ranging from zero in 29
Table 5.3 Summary Statistics for Regression Model – Australia Variable
Mean
Median
Standard Deviation
Minimum
Maximum
ONP vote Per cent immigrant Modified swing % immigrant/swing Unemployment Per cent aboriginal Per cent aboriginal × unemployment Low education
8.5 13.5 10.0 1.9 9.3 1.8 16.9
7.6 9.9 8.6 1.2 9.1 1.1 10.3
5.6 12.7 6.8 2.2 2.9 2.8 22.9
0.0 1.3 1.1 0.1 3.5 0.1 0.3
35.9 54.9 27.4 13.1 17.9 23.4 173.7
26.2
26.5
5.7
12.1
39.7
Immigrants and the Host Polity 93 constituencies with no ONP candidate to 35.9 percent for Pauline Hanson herself. The immigrant presence refers to the percentage of individuals who speak a language other than English in the home.30 The average immigrant presence is 13.5 per cent; the range is from 1 per cent to almost 55 per cent. The range of the immigrant electoral bloc variable is somewhat smaller, from 0.1 to 13.1. This reflects the fact that even large immigrant communities may have little power if they are not in swing constituencies. The summary statistics for the French analysis are presented in Table 5.4. For France, the extreme right is more substantial, with the Front National receiving an average of 13.3 per cent. The range is similar to Australia, with 2.9 per cent on the low end and 36.8 per cent on the high end. The percentage of immigrants in each constituency is significantly lower in France, with a mean of 6.8 per cent and a range of 0.6 per cent to 29.5 per cent.31 The pro-immigrant bloc is calculated differently in France, as the number of naturalized citizens is reported. Nonetheless, the pro-immigrant bloc – the size of the immigrant voting population relative to the swing that would change electoral outcomes – has a mean of 0.5 relative to the Australian figure of 1.9. This means that, on average, the immigrant voting population is only half the size necessary to swing electoral outcomes. The maximum is 4.6 relative to the 13.1 seen in Australia. Unemployment is higher in France, with a mean of 11.6 versus 9.3 in Australia. And the variable that accounts for anti-immigrant sentiment in France is also higher than the antiaboriginal sentiment in Australia, with a mean of 77.4 versus 16.9 in Australia. In summary, we should anticipate stronger support for the extreme right in France than in Australia as the factors that give rise to anti-immigrant sentiment are higher while the opposition to the extreme right is more modest. The analysis is an ordinary least squares regression (OLS). For Australia, several of the variables have a skewed distribution, posing the problem of heteroscedasticity in the OLS analysis. Therefore, I employed Huber’s jack-knife procedure to correct the standard errors in the regression. For Australia, the model results are presented in Table 5.5.32 Most importantly, for purposes of the argument presented here, the immigrant political significance 33
Table 5.4 Summary Statistics for Regression Model – France Variable
Mean
Median
Standard Deviation
Minimum
Front National vote Per cent naturalized citizens Modified swing Per cent naturalized citizen/swing Unemployment Per cent immigrant Per cent immigrant × unemployment
13.3 3.5 16.8 0.5
12.7 3.3 13.2 0.2
4.9 2.2 12.8 0.7
2.9 0.04 1.1 0.01
36.8 13.9 54.4 4.6
11.6 6.8 77.4
11.5 5.8 69.9
2.3 4.5 54.5
5.9 0.6 6.1
17.0 29.5 394.9
Maximu
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variable is statistically significant and relatively large. For each unit change in the variable, the ONP vote is reduced by more than 0.46 per cent, almost a half a percentage point. Holding all other factors constant, the average ONP vote is reduced by a full 6 per cent in the division with the largest score (13.1 times 0.462). This is a significant reduction, given the average ONP vote of 8.5 per cent.34 Anti-Aboriginal sentiment increases the ONP vote by 0.05 per cent and low education increases the ONP vote by almost 0.5 per cent. The presence of an ALP incumbent reduces the ONP vote by twice that amount, 1 per cent. The absence of an ONP candidate reduces the vote, holding all else equal, by 3.7 per cent. The Queensland vote is, on average, 2.7 per cent higher than the national average and the Tasmanian vote is, on average, 6.7 per cent less than the national average, for reasons yet to be discovered. Hanson’s publicity as head of the party contributed 19.6 per cent of her overall vote. The model accounts well
Table 5.5 Determinants of One Nation Party vote: Australian Federal Elections, 1998 (Dependent variable: Percent ONP Vote in Federal Divisions) Coefficient (standard error) Pro-immigrant bloc
–0.462*** (0.083)
Anti-Aboriginal sentiment
0.056*** (0.010)
Low education
0.450*** (0.033)
ALP incumbent
–1.024** (0.412)
No ONP candidate
–3.747*** (0.746)
Queensland
2.683*** (6.18)
Tasmania
–6.712*** (0.1125)
Hanson
19.631*** (0.680)
Constant
–3.157*** (0.852)
Adjusted R
2
N = 147 Note:
*** = probability of t > 0.001 ** = probability of t > 0.010
0.818
Immigrants and the Host Polity 95 for the variation in ONP votes across federal electoral divisions; the R2, or explained variation, is 0.818 or 82 per cent. For France, the model results are presented in Table 5.6. Because several variables have a severe right skew, those variables were logged, transforming the data into more normal distributions. When both the dependent and the independent variables are logged, the coefficient can be interpreted as a one percentage point change in the independent variable gives rise to the coefficient percentage change in the dependent variable. The model results are quite similar to the Australian results. The pro-immigrant bloc has the correct sign and is statistically significant. For each percentage change in the pro-immigrant bloc, there is a 0.05 per cent decrease in the Front National vote. For the anti-immigrant variable, each per cent change gives rise to a 0.35 per cent increase in the Front National vote. The remaining variables are less easy to interpret as the coefficients are in logged units. None the less, similar to Australia, Front National leaders get an electoral boost in light of their leadership positions and the surrounding publicity. The Bouches-du-Rhône department is more likely to have a larger Front National vote as this is Le Pen’s home department. And the region of Corsica (with two departments) is less likely to vote Front National. The model explains 53 per cent of the variance in Front National vote, less than in the Australian case but still quite a good fit. And Table 5.6 Determinants of Front National Vote: French Legislative Elections, 1993 (Dependent variable: Logged Percent Front National Vote in Legislative Constituencies) Coefficient (standard error) Pro-immigrant bloc (logged)
–0.051*** (0.012)
Anti-immigrant sentiment (logged)
0.349*** (0.018)
Bouches-du-Rhône
0.317*** (0.06)
Corsica
–1.149*** (0.127)
Front National leaders
0.72*** (0.149)
Constant
1.00*** (0.085)
Adjusted R
2
N = 465 Note: *** = probability of t > 0.001
0.531
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data for low education were not available and might provide a significant boost in the model’s explanatory power.
Conclusions Immigrants affect many aspects of the host country. Their effects on labour markets, education and social services have been well researched. It is less clear how immigrants affect the host polity. This chapter is one of the first contributions to evaluate the role of immigrant voters and their effect on the anti-immigrant extreme right. Results from Australia and France demonstrate that immigrant voters work to dampen anti-immigrant rhetoric and the ability of the extreme right to tap anti-immigrant sentiment. The difference between France and Australia is not one of kind but one of degree. In France there are fewer immigrants and they are less rapidly incorporated into the host polity. Therefore, although they do act to mute the appeal of the Front National, their influence is less powerful than in Australia. All nations appear to experience anti-immigrant sentiment, at least ephemerally, when large immigrant populations combine with an economic downturn. But enfranchised immigrant voters help to stem this xenophobic tide. In their absence, others must mobilize or the extreme right can mount a continuing presence. Countries must be understood not in terms of ethnic and settler distinctions but by the degree to which they incorporate the immigrant population politically. Moreover, for those who see extreme right parties as a threat to a tolerant multicultural environment, efforts to enfranchise the migrant population would be useful.
Notes 1 See Mark Miller, Foreign Workers in Europe: An Emerging Political Force, New York: Praeger, 1981, for an early examination of immigrant politics, and Patrick Ireland, The Policy Challenge of Ethnic Diversity: Immigrant Politics in France and Switzerland, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, for a more recent evaluation. Both focus on nonelectoral forms of immigrant political participation. 2 See, for example, Hans-Georg Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994; Herbert Kitschelt, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1995; Tomas Faist, ‘Immigration, integration and the ethnicization of politics’, European Journal of Political Research, 1996: 25; Robert W. Jackman and K. Volpert, ‘Conditions Favouring Parties of the Extreme Right in Western Europe’, British Journal of Political Science, 1997, 26(4): 501–521; Hans-Georg Betz and S. Immerfall (eds.), The New Politics of the Right. Neo-Populist Parties and Movements in Established Democracies, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998. 3 Faist, ibid., p. 440. 4 Ibid., p. 441. 5 Kitschelt, op.cit. 6 The vast majority of this literature focuses solely on Western Europe. The only study I know that systematically incorporates a broader data set of ‘established democracies’ is Betz and Immerfall, op. cit. It includes chapters on Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and India.
Immigrants and the Host Polity 97 7 Figures are 1998 for Japan and 1996 for Australia. This excludes the foreign-born or foreign population in very small countries such as Luxembourg, Monaco and Andorra. SOPEMI, Trends in International Migration, SOPEMI 2000, Paris: OECD, 2001, and Japan Statistics Bureau, Japan Statistical Yearbook 2000, Tokyo: Statistics Bureau, 2000. 8 This statement is true for OECD countries today; we all well know that, in the past, the settler states had an indigenous population that was ultimately exceeded by the immigrant population. 9 For the advanced market economy countries, New Zealand is the only exception to this rule at the national level – legal resident aliens with one year’s residence can vote in national elections. Some states allow non-citizens to vote in local elections; citizens of member states of the European Union resident in another member state may vote in local elections and in European Union parliamentary elections. 10 Jeannette Money, ‘The Political Economy of Citizenship Policies’, paper presented at the annual meetings of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, March 24–27, 2002. 11 Jus soli can be unconditional, as in the United States, or conditional on legal residence, as in Britain and Australia. 12 See, for example, Louis Desipio, ‘The New Urban Citizen: Electoral Participation among the Naturalized’, in Lydio F. Tomasi (ed.), In Defense of the Alien, Volume XXII, New York: Center for Migration Studies, 2000, for Hispanic voters in the United States, and Jean-Luc Richard, ‘Comment votent les jeunes français issus de l’immigration?’ (How do French children of immigrants vote?) Ville-Ecole-Integration, 1999, 118, for second generation immigrants in France. 13 See, for example, Bruce E. Cain, D. Roderick Kiewiet and Carole Uhlaner, ‘The Acquisition of Partisanship by Latinos and Asian Americans’, American Journal of Political Science, 1991, 351: 390–422 for Latinos and Asian Americans in the United States, and Nedim Ögelman, Directing Discontent: Turkish-origin Associations in Germany, Ph.D. dissertation, Austin: University of Texas, 2000, for Turks in Germany. 14 Jeannette Money, ‘New Citizens: Immigrant Electoral Participation and the Host Polity’, in Lydio F. Tomasi (ed.), In Defense of the Alien, Volume XXII, New York: Center for Migration Studies, 2000. 15 Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, New York: Harper, 1957, and E. G. Carmines and J. H. Kuklinski, ‘Incentives, Opportunities, and the Logic of Public Opinion in American Political Representation’, in J. A. Ferejohn and J. H. Kuklinski (eds.), Information and Democratic Processes, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1990. 16 This explanation is certainly congruent with the findings of French sociologist, Michel Wieviorka, La France raciste (Racist France), Paris: Seuil, 1992, who argues that, in most individuals, racist, xenophobic attitudes are malleable. In his experiments, individuals took cues from the social definition of the issue by the group discussion leader. New leaders elicited different attitudes from the same group of individuals; attitudes shifted from racist to sympathetic depending on the definition of the issue by the group leader. 17 William H. Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986, p. 66. 18 Jeannette Money, Fences and Neighbors: The Political Geography of Immigration Control, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. 19 SOPEMI 2001, op.cit. 20 This was the standard practice until the legislation of 22 July 1993, which required that young foreigners specifically request French citizenship (SOPEMI 2001, op. cit.). With the law of 16 March 1998, the automatic acquisition of citizenship was restored; see UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees),
98
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30
31
32 33 34
Political and Legal Security Research/Evaluation: Country of Origin and Legal Information. http://www.unhcr.ch/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/ research. SOPEMI, Trends in International Migration, Annual Report 1994, Paris: OECD, 1995. Ibid. SOPEMI 2001, op.cit., INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques), Annuaire Statistique de la France, Paris: INSEE, 2002, and ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics), Yearbook Australia, Canberra: ABS, 2002. Richard, op. cit. Money 1999, op. cit. The size of the swing was augmented by one point, to avoid inflating the role of constituencies with electoral margins of less than 1 per cent. For Australia, see Murray Goot, ‘Hanson’s heartland: who’s for One Nation and why’, in T. Abbott et al. (eds.), Two Nations. The Causes and Effects of the Rise of the One Nation Party in Australia, Melbourne: Bookman, 1998, and R. Davis and R. Stimson, ‘Disillusionment and disenchantment at the fringe: explaining the geography of the One Nation party vote at the Queensland election’, People and Place, 1998, 6(3): 45–51. A similar variable was created to capture ‘anti-immigrant sentiment’ but was not statistically significant when entered into the analysis. Andrew Kopras, Comparisons of 1996 Census Characteristics: Commonwealth Electoral Divisions, Canberra: Parliamentary Research Service Background Paper, 1997. Two other indicators of immigrant presence, percent foreign born and percent first and second generation immigrants, were tested as well. All three indicators of immigrant presence provided almost identical statistical results. This is undoubtedly due to the high correlation among the three indicators. Data are from the 1990 census, broken down by department and the principal communes and urban units. Instead of the usual 96 departmental figures, all urban units with 30,000 or more inhabitants have separate statistics. See INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques), Recensement general de la population de 1990. Le départment et ses principales communes Paris: INSEE, 1992. See Jeannette Money, ‘Xenophobia and Xenophilia: Pauline Hanson and the Counterbalancing of Electoral Incentives in Australia’, People and Place, 2001, 7(3): 7–19, for a qualitative analysis of the Australian 1998 federal election. INSEE 1992, op.cit. Moreover, once the electorally significant immigrant population is taken into account, the actual immigrant population is statistically insignificant.
Part II
Cultural and Identity Security
6
Cultural and Identity Security Immigrants and the Legal Expression of National Identity Elspeth Guild
One of the most recurring themes about immigrants in Western Europe is their effect on national culture and identity. When anti-immigrant parties gain votes in member states such as Denmark and the Netherlands in 2001 and France in 2002 one of the enduring responses is to question the role of immigrants themselves in eliciting their separation from the mainstream community. The call for more and better integration of immigrants into the mainstream community is heard across Europe. In this chapter I will consider some of the aspects of immigration and national identity in particular as these are reflected in Europe. There are two starting points as regards this consideration, first: what is culture and identity as an expression of the national and sovereign? And secondly: what is an immigrant in relation to cultural inclusion or exclusion in the nation? Both of these starting points engage the substance of the question of legal expression of national identity and foreigners. In order to understand these two concepts and their interrelation, a framework regarding the nature of the nation, sovereignty and identity in law is required. For the first – what is culture and the individual – an anthropologist, Ernest Gellner, provides important insights; for the second – what is the individual in the face of sovereignty – I shall use as a starting point the philosopher, Giorgio Agamben. Through these thinkers I will develop this chapter on nation, culture and identity security and in the process show how the use of law as it becomes supranational (in Europe at least) changes the meanings and balance of the nation, sovereignty and identity. Further this process of transformation from the nation-state to more varied forms of governance, particularly in Europe, is taking place with wide popular support.
Culture, the Individual and the Nation-state Turning first to Ernest Gellner, one of the last books, which he wrote before his death in 1995, directly addresses the issue of cultural identity as expressed in the twentieth century in the form of nationalism.1 In his view only culture and social organisation are universal and perennial. States and nationalisms are not. Nationalism is a political principle which maintains that similarity of culture is the basic social bond.2 As an anthropologist who has studied many different societies, he challenges the premise, accepted in so much of the discussion of citizenship
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and exclusion, that people want to live surrounded by others whom they consider ‘the same’. As he states: It simply is not the case that, at all times and in all places, men wanted the boundaries of social units and of cultures to converge, or to put it in a manner closer to their own style, that they wanted to be among their own kind, excluding ‘others’. On the contrary: men very, very often live in units which violated this principle, and most of the time this violation was accepted without protest or opposition, indeed without any awareness that a vital, alleged universal principle was being violated.3 The matter of fact way in which Gellner states this takes the reader by surprise. Yet when we consider migration between Europe and North America in the twentieth century, it is apparent that Gellner is telling us a truth which we do not often hear. Clearly if living among ‘one’s own’ had been the foremost desire of people in Europe in the twentieth century, the great mixed migrations to North America would not have occurred. Gellner’s approach is central to this discussion as the representation of immigrants as a threat to cultural identity is based on the implicit idea that homogeneity of culture is a good thing and that persons with different cultural norms are threatening or a risk to the dominant group. The basis of the nationalist’s claim is that it is self-evident that, as Gellner puts it, ‘people should be averse to living with people of a different culture and, above all, that they should resent being governed by them’.4 The result of nationalist theory is that there is a need ‘to protect the national culture by endowing it with its own stateprotector, the need to unmask, neutralise and drive out the foreigners, who wish to destroy and debase that culture’. Gellner outlines the transformation of Western societies from agrarian where solidarity is within classes rather than within a concept of the nation. According to his analysis, cultural affinity in agrarian cultures is not based on an idea of common national origins but on position in the hierarchy. Survival depended on access to resources which takes the form of surplus food production. Access to this surplus food depends on a hierarchical relationship to those holding power – thus barons had more interest and solidarity with barons who were in a similar relationship to access to resources than with peasants who might be regarded as almost a separate species. According to Gellner, the transformation from agrarian to industrial societies required a reformulation of the central organising principle from hierarchy within the meaning of the agrarian world – i.e. who gets access when to the surplus food supplies – to technocracy and with it a different understanding of boundaries and solidarity. What is key to his analysis is that with the advent of industrial societies, the need to build a different framework of social solidarity arose. Technocracy requires an investment in social advancement through education of the population as a whole. The achievement of this objective requires a different basis than an agrarian community and this different basis is fulfilled in certain societies by nationalism.5
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Following Gellner’s approach, national identity is a construction of modernity – his ‘Industria’ needs a mechanism of solidarity which embraces the majority of the population in a particular area through a widening of culture towards a common (economically dominated) vision of the world. The inclusiveness which national culture demands presupposes that it is fulfilling a mission of incorporation of persons into its field. Its object is to encompass those on the territory and thus integrate them into the mainstream ideals and objectives of the society. The moment this idea of national culture becomes dominant, not only does culture need to impose itself in a national fashion but the separation of those who do not share the elements of the newly ‘national’ culture from those who do take the form of dividing those who belong and the minorities and immigrants who are different. The telescoping of these two categories – minorities as those who have not internalised the national culture and immigrants as persons whose antecedents are from elsewhere and for that reason participate in some other national culture which is in competition with the territorially bound one wherein they live is another part of the puzzle. Those successful minorities who manage to avoid this assimilation into foreignness become perceived as part of the variations within the national culture which are part of the settlement of regional claims, for instance accents in language. If they are incorporated into the national culture they also tend to lose their power. They are identified as relating to people from a particular place rather than a class.6 How then does national culture connect with immigrants? First immigrants must be identified as a group from the perspective of national culture. In all Western European societies there are two groups of immigrants – those who are visible and those who are invisible. This, of course, has nothing to do with colour or visible characteristics but to do with perceptions of the host community. For instance, in the UK, most US, Canadian and Australian immigrants are invisible. Although they are identifiable not least by the way in which they speak the language they are not defined in social terms as immigrants (whatever their legal status may be). Because they are classified as ‘not immigrants’ for all but the most technical legal purposes, their claim to minor cultural differences, such as celebrating 4 July for US nationals, is tolerated as a manifestation which does not challenge national culture, much in the same way as regional cultural differences are tolerated. Those who are ‘visible’ immigrants, are not so because of colour but by designation. For example, Russians or Nigerians in the UK are classified as immigrants and are expected to conform in ways not expected of Canadians or Australians. For the purposes of cultural identity, ‘immigrants’ include persons who hold the nationality of the state but who are suspected of retaining differences, which are not sanctioned by the construction of the national culture. The discussion sparked by the UK Home Secretary, David Blunkett in September 2002 regarding a duty on ‘immigrants’ to speak English at home is a good example. As the response of the press and other political leaders including former minister of the same party, Keith Vaz, showed, everyone understood immediately who the ‘immigrants’ were of whom Mr Blunkett was speaking – Asians most of
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whom have lived all their lives in the UK and most probably as British citizens in law.7 This discussion was not about French Canadians living in the UK and speaking to their children their mother tongue at home. A Home Secretary could permit himself to make a comment about immigrants speaking English at home in full knowledge that everyone in the community hearing his comments would understand the code in which he was communicating. The definition of an ‘immigrant’ for the purposes of this discussion, is based on certain cultural manifestations relating to the Indian sub-continent, not on immigration status, length of residence in the UK or indeed, acquisition of British citizenship.8 The definition of immigrant however, also indicates the tension between the modern world of Gellner and the postmodern world of Bauman9 where the value of speed of movement and money transforms the mechanisms of solidarity from national to that of economic class. The visible and invisible immigrant is not only defined by the host community’s intolerance but also by economic power. Invisible remain those migrants who have good jobs, visible become those who are poor. This has become so much part of the landscape of who is an immigrant that the UK Home Office can issue a press release promoting the fact that it has issued 108,825 work permits for the admission of foreign nationals and their dependants in 2001, 19 per cent higher than in 2000 and intends to issue more work permits for the admission of the highly paid in the future. Work permits are only issued to persons coming to work in the UK in highly skilled and executive jobs for which they have already been hired. In the same press release, as a small note at the bottom of the page the same ministry can equally congratulate itself on a reduction of the number of asylum seekers in the same period by 11 per cent to 71,365.10 Any observer still in doubt about which are ‘the immigrants’ need only look at the press release of the same ministry of 7 October 2002 where the Home Secretary sets out a raft of new measures to be brought in to help tackle abuse of the asylum system: The UK has a long history of protecting those fleeing persecution, but we know that many of those applying for asylum are simply economic migrants. I am determined to crack down on the widespread abuse of our asylum process – to build trust and confidence in the system, and ensure that it works effectively to support those who have genuine protection needs. The economic migrants whom the same Minister was delighted to admit two weeks earlier are the wealthy. The poor economic migrants are those whom the Minister fears are seeking to abuse his asylum process. He does not indicate who, in the national culture, is the intended recipient of trust and confidence. In the expression of national culture, the rich and those from states which have been culturally defined as invisible (or perhaps indivisible from the host state) are not the objects of integration discourse or requirements. They do not need to be required to adapt to a rather incomplete image of national culture.11 The poor and those who are visible immigrants, even if they have the nationality
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of the country itself and have lived there all their lives, are required to satisfy an ever higher threshold of integration until it arrives at the absurd – suggesting that families with more than one language ought to speak only the language of the host community inside their homes. The hallmark of the categorisation of ‘immigrants’ and ‘national culture’ is the integration discourse. There is a duty on some people, who for ease of reference and to exclude them from the right to contest constraint, are called immigrants, to abandon some of their cultural expression in favour of becoming more like the host community. The difficulties of identifying what is the host community for the purposes of this integration duty are exemplified by the Dutch policy of requiring some immigrants to follow integration programmes.12 However, the principle that there are some people who may be obliged to become more like others is central to the concept of integration. Increasingly this takes legislative form in mandatory integration programmes which immigrants must follow or else be penalised by withdrawal of state benefits.13 The linkage of integration with poverty is apparent. If immigrants do not claim state benefits in certain forms such as income or family support (as opposed to medical services or mortgage tax relief which are state benefits for the well off) then they are not affected by the consequences of failure to comply. Integration is about transforming some persons into others and creating the incentives for those persons who are in the subordinate position and required to change to do so at the bidding of the dominant community. It is instructive to note that cultural or social integration is not used as a mechanism of discourse or law as regards nationals of the EU member states who are resident in member states other than those of their nationality. It appears in the context of migrant workers, nationals of the member states, only as regards the creation of the best conditions of integration for the spouses and children as regards access to benefits.14 It is for the spouses and children to determine whether or not they wish to avail themselves of the integration conditions. The discourse at the EU level uses the word ‘convergence’ avoiding the subordinate/dominant difference implicit in integration. The member states indices are converging one upon the other in a consistent manner. The discourse of convergence is a voluntary one where there is a programme within which there is a natural movement. It does not contain the coercive idea of the movement of lesser valued towards more valuable norms. The European Union creates difficulties for the nationalist perspective from a number of different points of view. The word ‘immigration’ is no longer used as regards movement of nationals of the member states from one to the other. Instead these are persons who are exercising their right of free movement of persons. In EU parlance, the word immigration or immigrant is assiduously avoided in the description of the Portuguese national moving to Sweden or the Finnish national moving to Spain. With each enlargement of the European Union, starting with Denmark, Ireland and the UK in 1971, fears were expressed about the influx of ‘immigrants’ expected from the new member states. In 1971 parts of the press in France and the Netherlands were filled with scare
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stories about how Black Britons with no tradition of minimum wages were on their way to these countries to take jobs from local people.15 There was a reoccurrence of this process over the period towards May 2004 as regards the enlargement of the European Union. In December 2002 at the Copenhagen Council meeting of the Union, the decision was taken to agree the accession of ten countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic area and two island states.16 The perception of nationals from these states was subject to a transformation from ‘immigrants’ to citizens of the Union. Some member states, including the UK, announced in 2002/2003 that they would not apply any transitional limitations on free movement of workers from the accession states from the moment of membership though in the end all except Ireland did. It is also worth bearing in mind that, contrary to the nationalist discourse, nationals of EU member states have consistently voted in favour of transferring fundamental governance responsibilities to the exclusive benefit of the EU. They have continuously deprived themselves of the right to govern themselves as nation-states. Instead there has been a conscious choice (if reluctant in some member states such as Denmark) to share the powers of governance with foreigners (i.e. nationals of other member states). Of course each member state is represented in the EU institutions and each member state has a power to vote for or against legislative acts. But once an act has been adopted all member states are obliged to respect and give effect to it.17
Cultural Identity, the Individual and Sovereignty The second key to understanding the relationship of the concept of cultural identity and immigrant status is that of sovereignty. Who is entitled to differentiate between the citizen and the immigrant and what are the theoretical positions? Here Giorgio Agamben’s work on sovereignty is useful. Sovereignty is the mechanism through which nationalism and the separation of the citizen from the immigrant takes place. What I mean here is that it is through the exercise of the right of the state to pass laws which determine which individuals are citizens and which are foreigners, the state exercises its sovereignty. The choice of which type of nationality laws to have is an expression by the modern state of who belongs to the state and who does not. States, which only permit citizenship to people who are deemed to belong to the blood of the nation, are entitled to do so because they are sovereign. States which choose citizenship laws, which grant citizenship automatically to everyone born within the state, are entitled to do so because this is an exercise of sovereignty. In both cases, the state will contain, at any given time both people who are citizens (usually the majority) and others who are not. Agamben situates in time this differentiation of the citizen from the individual at the centre of the French revolution and the creation of the nation-state. In the system of the nation-state, the so-called sacred and inalienable rights of man show themselves to lack every protection and reality at the moment
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in which they can no longer take the form of rights belonging to citizens of a state. If one considers the matter, this is in fact implicit in the ambiguity of the very title of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789.18 After all, why would one need a Declaration of rights both for men and for citizens if there was not an inherent difference between the two? This differentiation of citizens from individuals in general as rights holders is central to the concept of sovereignty, tied to the nation-state. Declarations of rights must therefore be viewed as the place in which the passage from divinely authorised royal sovereignty to national sovereignty is accomplished. This passage assures the exceptio of life in the new state order that will succeed the collapse of the ancien régime.19 Thus the second step of the theoretical framework is how bare life is transformed into a citizen and becomes the bearer of sovereignty. This is then separated from the individual without citizenship who does not have this characteristic of sovereignty inherent in him or her. In support of this central understanding of the modern world Agamben notes that: one of the few rules to which the Nazis constantly adhered during the course of the ‘Final Solution’ was that Jews could be sent to the extermination camps only after they have been fully denationalised (stripped even of the residual citizenship left to them after the Nuremberg laws).20 The concept of sovereignty which is inherent in the citizen creates a fundamental difference between the individual as citizen and as immigrant. The immigrant, by definition does not have the capacity of sovereignty within him or her and thus the rights and guarantees of citizenship can be withheld from him or her. So for example, the UK government could justify to the UK Parliament the introduction of a provision of law permitting the state to detain indefinitely a foreign national suspected of being an international terrorist where such indefinite detention would not be permitted in respect of a British national.21 As one British non-government organisation pointed out to the UK Select Committee on Home Affairs in the context of their enquiry into the Act: what seems to be being suggested by the Government and in this Bill is that we can somehow avoid the usual presumption of innocence which will apply to British citizens and that because these people are foreigners we can lock them up for indefinite periods. The reason that the Government can get away with that is because of the procedures which exist in the Immigration Act. We say that the foreigners who are in this country should be treated no differently from British citizens in the context of indefinite detention, in the context of internment, in the context of a presumption of
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This lower level of rights or indeed the struggle for rights at all is the ground of the difference between the citizen and the immigrant which is the result of the allocation of sovereignty. The right to protect national identity from suspected international terrorists results in the claim of the state to the power legitimately to detain immigrants indefinitely in circumstances where a national could not be detained. A surprising challenge by the UK courts to this difference of treatment came in the form of a decision of the Special Immigration Appeal Commission which found the legislation to breach the UK’s duties of non-discrimination contained in the European Convention on Human Rights.23 The decision was reversed on this point by the Court of Appeal.24 However, what is worth noting is that the national court had reference to a supranational norm (which in fact had only recently been incorporated into the domestic legal order) in order to find equality between individuals. The importance of the distinction between the individual as citizen and as foreigner, which is central to Agamben’s sovereignty, begins to break down when the supranational becomes engaged. The individual as a holder of rights, which transcend the state’s power of definition, is central to the concept of international human rights. The individual has rights because he or she exists in the human rights tradition, not because he or she forms part of the group which negotiated the constitutional settlement between the rulers and the ruled. An important moment in this breaking of the nation-state control over rights took place in 1993. In that year Yugoslavia was required to report on its implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in accordance with the provisions of the Covenant to the Comitee created for this purpose. However, by 1993, Yugoslavia no longer existed and had been fragmented in to a number of new states one of which was still in a state of civil war. The Committee was faced with the question: what happens to the rights guaranteed by the Covenant to the individuals whose state no longer exists. The Committee found that the successor states to the former Yugoslavia were under a duty to report on the application of the Covenant rights. The reasoning here is that the rights have become the property of the individuals who enjoy them. The transformation of the state, even in the most violent form of state dissolution cannot have the effect of depriving these individuals of the rights which now belong to them.25 Of course the human rights sceptic will immediately raise the issue of compliance – without mechanisms to force state compliance these rights have little meaning. It is certainly the case that the development of human rights protection works most effectively where there are strong states capable of delivering human rights protection. States, which are too weak to provide even minimal rule of law, present different problems for the human rights system. Thus there is nothing inimical between international human rights regimes and strong states indeed the later depends on the former. However, the latter constrains the former. The
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state is no longer free to treat immigrants in ways which do not fulfil the requirements of the treaties. The importance of this development is particularly clear in Europe where the European Convention on Human Rights and the supranational court with jurisdiction to receive complaints from individuals regarding breaches of the Convention rights, the European Court of Human Rights, hold the member states in an increasingly close embrace. Article 1 of the Convention states that the signatories ‘shall secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms …’ of the Convention. There is no question that the rights contained apply equally to nationals and immigrants, and some of the most fiercely fought cases before the Court have been in respect of immigrants.26 In 2002 exactly this issue of the rights of immigrants to fair treatment. by the state came before the Court.27 The case was brought by a family, the Conkas, Roma of Slovak nationality against Belgium. They applied for asylum in Belgium in November 1998 on account of their fear of persecution in Slovakia by skinheads and others, against which aggression, the Slovak state (in the form of the police) was not affording them protection. Their applications were rejected in a summary proceeding and they were ordered to leave the state which they did not do. Various appeal procedures were pursued without success. At the end of September 1999, the Belgian police sent to the family (and to numerous other Slovak Roma) a notice requiring them to attend at the police station on a given date to enable the files concerning their applications for asylum to be completed. When they did so, they were served with expulsion notices and protocols indicating that they would be detained for the purpose of expulsion. Six days later, they were expelled via a military airport, their seat numbers marked on their hands with ballpoint pen. The family claimed that they had been subject to illegal deprivation of their liberty (article 5 ECHR). The Court agreed finding Belgium in breach of its human rights obligations. The Court noted the obligation of states to act in good faith towards the citizen as one of the principles of governance central to constitutional settlements. Through the general principles of the Convention, the Court held that illegally present aliens are entitled to reliability in communications with the state. State actors are not entitled to treat them as criminals, nor are they entitled to use deception to facilitate their detention and expulsion. Respect for the individual is central irrespective of the national rules on legal/illegal presence. The right of the state to define who is lawfully present and who is unlawfully on the territory does not change the nature of the duty of bona fides of the state authorities with the individual. I have insisted at some length on the specific decision of the European Court of Human Rights on the Slovak Roma in Belgium as it shows most graphically the meaning of the loss of state control over the treatment of immigrants, even ones designated as illegal, through the acceptance of human rights duties which exceed the state. Before a European state can regain the sovereignty to treat immigrants by deception or strategem it would have to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. The British Prime Minister Blair
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suggested in February 2003 that the UK might consider such denunciation in order for the UK to be able to return asylum seekers to countries where they feared torture (prohibited under the Convention by article 3). The reaction both within the UK and elsewhere in Europe was swift and extremely negative. Among the issues, which such a course of action would entail, is that the state would be required to leave the European Union as well.
Conclusions From Gellner comes the question mark over the essentialism claimed by nationalism. As he puts it, there is nothing inherently human in seeking to be surrounded by persons whom one perceives as being similar or different in origin or indeed in any other aspect. Agamben places this in a theoretical framework of sovereignty – what is the essence of the difference between being a citizen and a non-citizen – as the capacity to be a holder of sovereignty and thus the right to define the exception. Escape from the nation-state provides the route to an alternative perspective of sovereignty which also permits a way out of the sovereignty trap as regards foreigners. Societies make choices about how to structure membership and exclusion. These can be placed in opposition – membership limited to persons with certain characteristics which mean they are designated as citizens or not. The choices made by national laws regarding the acquisition and loss of citizenship are very different from one country to another. Or they can be defined as complementary – the choice which has been made in the European Union as regards retention of national citizenship with the addition of citizenship of the Union as an additional status. In the same way, diversity can be presented as a benefit to a society or a threat. The construction of mandatory integration programmes in some countries usually indicates a fear of diversity no matter how much the proponents seek to justify these projects as for the benefit of the ‘immigrants’. The right of immigrants, nationals of EU member states, not to integrate, but to remain distinct, is constructed as a benefit to the whole of the Union, evidence of diversity. The experience in Europe indicates just how easily societies can move from one way of looking at these questions to another. It also shows just how many mutually contradictory positions can be maintained at the same time – integration as necessary from some but not others: a differentiation reflecting other criteria at work for which the nationality category is only a shield behind which to hide other motivations. The hold of sovereignty over the territory and the treatment of individuals, thus differentiating between citizens, the embodiment of sovereignty, and foreigners, the eternal outsiders, is also subject to transformations. The development of international human rights standards is the clearest of these changes. As I have sought to show, the immigrant can no longer be excluded entirely. Human rights are not only obligations on states but also possessions of individuals, including immigrants. The creation of institutions and mechanisms for human rights compliance has the effect of changing the relationship of the state to
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sovereignty over the others within its boundaries. While governments may express dismay and anger over certain decisions of supranational courts over human rights violations, there is none the less a continuous trend towards ratification of international human rights treaties and indeed towards the creation of mechanisms for their enforcement. The establishment of the International Criminal Court, notwithstanding substantial opposition from the US indicates a continuing commitment to the process of supranationalising the rights and duties of individuals within a framework of human rights. Cultural and identity security are by no means enemies. They are rather engaged in a dialogue which takes place both within the nation-state and increasingly at the supranational level. The development of international human rights law is central to the success of this dialogue. However, even without the establishment of international norms on the protection of the individual, the European Union’s history of transforming persons perceived as ‘immigrants’ in need of integration into persons exercising citizenship rights whose diversity enhances the Union demonstrates an alternative approach to cultural and identity security. The embrace of difference as a positive value embodied in foreigners who come to a territory has a history both ancient and modern worthy of greater attention. There are alternative frameworks of value which do not offend culture and identity but rather through respect and inclusion create greater security for both.
Notes 1 2 3 4 5
6
7 8 9 10 11
E. Gellner, Nationalism, London: Phoenix, 1997. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 7. With characteristic modesty he finishes: ‘All we can say is this: we are in possession (and have offered) an inherently plausible and persuasive argument which purports to show (a) that homogeneity of culture is an unlikely determinant of political boundaries in the agrarian world, and a very probable one in the modern industrial/scientific world and (b) that the transition from Agraria to Industria is also the transition from a world in which high (literacy and education-linked) cultures are a minority accomplishment and privilege (if they exist at all) to a world in which they become the pervasive culture of society as a whole. We have linked these general observations to the emergence of nationalism.’ Ibid., p. 96. Though not always so, parts of Agraria are still alive and well competing with national culture in Industria. The rules about who can walk on college greens in Cambridge is an example of this – being limited to a class based on privilege within a closed system. ‘Vaz attacks Blunkett in language row’, The Guardian, 16 September 2002. For an excellent analysis of this issue see M. Dummett, On Immigration and Refugees, London & New York: Routledge, 2001. A. Bauman, Globalisation: The Human Costs, London: Polity 1998. ‘Home Office Statistics Show More Work Permit Holders Coming to the UK’, Home Office Press release, 26 September 2002. This incomplete nature is apparent in the discussion in the UK regarding the content of the new requirements for naturalisation as a British citizen. The Nationality,
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18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
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Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 requires persons seeking to naturalise to demonstrate an understanding of UK society and civic structures and to take a citizenship oath. In order to determine what UK society and civic structures are the Home Office established a senior level independent group headed by a distinguished academic (Professor Sir Bernard Crick) to determine what the contents of the new citizenship courses and ceremony should be. ‘Experts to advise on Citizenship Reforms’, Home Office Press release, 9 September 2002. Wet Inburgering Nieuwkomers (WIN) 1998. This is the framework of the Dutch policy and is being introduced in other European countries such as the UK. Preamble, Regulation 1612/68. R. W. Böhning, The Migration of Workers in the United Kingdom and Europe, London: OUP, 1972. Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey are candidates still awaiting a decision on admission. Not only is this included in the European Community Treaty at Article 10, but the Court of Justice has developed enforcement mechanisms of substantial constraint over the disobedient state – in the form of damages to individuals who suffer harm from the state’s failure to implement Community law correctly – C-6, 9/90 Francovich [1991] ECR I-5357. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 126. Ibid., p. 128. Ibid., p. 132. Part 4 the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. Quoted at para 25 Select Committee on Home Affairs, First Report, 2001–2002, The Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill. ‘Ex p A’, Special Immigration Appeals Commission, 30 July 2001, unreported. A, X and Y and Others v Secretary of State for the Home Department, EWCA Civ (2002) 1502. UN Human Rights committee’s Decision on State Succession to the Obligations of the Former Yugoslavia under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, EHRR, 1993, p 233. For example the case of national security and expulsion of an immigrant: Chahal v UK, European Court of Human Rights, 15 November 1996. Conka v Belgium, European Court of Human Rights, 5 February 2002.
7
Immigrants, Refugees and Racism Europeans and Their Denial Zrinka Bralo and John Morrison
Changing the law on asylum is the only fair way of helping the genuinely persecuted – and it’s the best defence against racism gaining ground. We have cut asylum applications by a half. But we must go further. We should cut back the ludicrously complicated appeal process, de-rail the gravy train of legal aid, fasttrack those from democratic countries, and remove those who fail in their claims without further judicial interference. (Tony Blair)1
The ‘right to seek asylum’ is an inalienable and universal human right, embodied in Article 14 of the 1948 Universal Declaration. However, it is a principle that the democratically elected governments of Europe feel they can no longer stand by. This is despite ‘asylum’ re-appearing in the 2003 Draft European Union Constitution, once again as a ‘fundamental human right’.2 For an elected political leader to promise that 50 per cent fewer people will be exercising this human right in a European country seems to undermine the very concept of a ‘Charter of Fundamental Rights of the Union’. Perhaps the intention is for the remaining 50 per cent to exercise this human right elsewhere or perhaps not at all. There has never been a right to ‘receive’ asylum, but to remove the universal right of ‘claiming’ it (i.e. access to some determination system) removes one of the minimum safeguards against human rights abuse and persecution. The European asylum debate has become a political obsession that in part relates to a failing asylum system, but is also heavily coded and touches on deeper feelings about immigration and race. European Governments are gradually moving asylum away from being a human right to more of an administrative humanitarian procedure. This would then be a tap that states can turn on and off as it suits them. This in itself would not be such a concern if it were not for the fact that the asylum debate is driven less by absolute numbers or the skills that refugees or immigrants can bring to a society, but much more by public perception and the need to win elections. Within a week of Tony Blair’s speech, the Chair of the British Commission on Racial Equality was speaking at the annual conference of the main British opposition party, the Conservatives, begging them to be a better opposition and not to cede votes to the extreme right British National Party (BNP):
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Cultural and Identity Security In some parts of the country it is beginning to look as though one of the components of the BNP’s success is the lack of any proper showing by the Tories [Conservatives]. People should realise that in some places the most effective way to get the BNP out is for people to vote Tory. The Tories themselves must put up a fight [there], even if they don’t think they can win.
Something strange is indeed afoot in Britain and the rest of Europe. A phenomenon, which defies logic in the longer term, for, reasons this chapter will outline, and is rooted in much deeper notions of European identity and the absence of well-defined human rights for the host populations. However, there is a short-term logic for those in positions of power because entering into a full and frank debate about race and immigration will not serve the short-term interests of those seeking re-election. The conclusion many mainstream parties reach is that they perceive a need to develop migration policies that are based on fear and misunderstanding in order to pacify a misinformed electorate. In this way the extreme parties of Britain (and the rest of Europe) are having a tremendous influence on the policies of elected Governments whether these extremists are part of the Government or not. As this chapter will suggest, we might have to look into some unusual corners to find opportunities for leadership for the public debate ahead.
The Real Crisis There is a real social and economic crisis that Europe will face in the coming decades, yet it is not one of uncontrollable immigration. Instead it is one caused by changing demographics and increased ageing. On the basis of current trends, the proportion of older persons in Europe will increase from 20 per cent in 1998 to 35 per cent in 2050. By then, one in every three persons will be 60 years or older. By 2050, the oldest country of the world will be Spain closely followed by Italy, with 3.6 and 3.4 persons aged 60 or above for each person below 15 years of age, respectively. By 2050 the number of Italians may have fallen from 57.5 million in 2000 to around 45 million; Spain’s population may drop from 40 million to 37 million. Germany, which currently has a population of around 80 million, could find itself with just 25 million inhabitants by the end of this century, according to recent projections by Deutsche Bank, which adds: ‘Even assuming (no doubt unrealistically high) annual immigration of 250,000, Germany’s population would decline to about 50 million by 2100’. In Europe, only Albania has a replacement birth rate. Europe’s average is 1.34 children per woman of childbearing age. The birth rate even in Catholic Ireland has fallen to 2.0, and in other Southern European Catholic countries it is only 1.2, little better than in Russia. We are in the midst of a silent revolution, one that extends well beyond demographics, with major economic, social, cultural, and psychological and spiritual implications. (Kofi Annan)3
Immigrants, Refugees and Racism 115 Since the United Nations Population Division brought the European population debate to wider attention in 2000, there has been general acceptance that significant demographic changes are inevitable. Where there is less agreement is the defining of the social and economic consequences of these changes. The DIW research institute in Berlin estimates that by 2020 Germany will have to import 1 million immigrants of working age each year simply to maintain its workforce.4 However, other commentators have suggested that shifting the retirement age and pension arrangements might in itself meet the economic burden.5 The Oxford academic David Coleman believes that there are ‘no feasible migration solutions to age-structure change and its effects on social security’ given that young migrants themselves grow old and reduce the number of young people elsewhere in the world. But migration does bring a flow of taxpayers into European economies with an ever-decreasing supply of the commodity. As the Economist magazine concludes: ‘migration cannot prevent ageing, but it can significantly reduce its fiscal consequences’.6 It is difficult to overstate the implications of the above. It is right to acknowledge that the accession of East European countries into the EU will meet some of this demographic challenge in the short-term. But the overall trend is the same. It is also arguable that technology will fill some of the shortfall. However, without significant inward migration in the coming decades, Europe will not have a labour force large enough to sustain such an elderly population at current standards of living. The social and cultural challenge for Europeans will be fundamental. The unspoken truth for many European democracies is that minority identities and cultures have been welcome only so long they remain just that – a collective minority of between 10–20 per cent. Although most Europeans do not actively practise any religion, there is a shared Christian heritage. There are a set of cultural norms around gender, family, community, sexuality, communication, art, music, food, work, leisure, age and ethnicity that are often unspoken until challenged. If Europe is truly ever to become multicultural – and it is very far from being so – then hegemonic relationships that have been in place for centuries will gradually be brought into focus. During this century the tension will be between how much Europe can fill its demographic and economic shortfall through embracing multiculturalism against those who want to maintain the centrality of a white Christian heritage. Some, such as Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission, do not recognise this contradiction and believe in a Europe both strong in its ‘Christian roots’ but also welcoming diversity.7 Yet, if, as Prodi states, ‘the Christian soul of Europe is the basis of our Unity’, what then is the basis for unity for non-Christians? The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas places human rights at the centre of what European identity might mean in a contemporary world. He refutes the idea that human rights are nothing more than a specifically Western notion of reason that has its origins in Platonism. Habermas claims that human rights are an essential normative process for all cultures and religious traditions living in interrelated proximity.8 What then are the values and individual freedoms
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which are ‘beyond negotiation’ and which are those that must be relinquished in order to embrace a more diverse society? This is the debate Europe should be having, but instead we are having heavily coded debates about asylum and illegal immigration and denying the existence of these more profound questions. Immigration and asylum are just tools to meet greater goals, be they political, economic, social or humanitarian, and it is impossible to be strategic about migration until you have a clear sense of what kind of society you want in the decades ahead. Arguably, it is only the extremists that are offering the public such a vision at the moment and their vision is about fear and maintaining the status quo at all costs. Immigration to Europe should have everything going for it, namely self-interest, rooted in facts about population trends from credible institutions. However, extreme intolerance and emotional angst of the ‘other’ dominate public debate about immigration in Europe. This has, in the last few years, allowed anti-immigration to gain parliamentary seats, albeit through the democratic process. It has also provoked almost unbelievable disregard for human rights and sadly resulted in racially motivated attacks on asylum seekers and other immigrants.
New Migration and the New Racism So what is the underlying discourse of the immigration debate in Europe? What kind of migratory future should Europe be planning for? Host communities might argue that they have rights and need to have some measure of control about the pace of social and cultural change into which they enter. The racism that many migrants face in Europe and the rise of the extreme right in European politics is rooted in this deeper insecurity and marginalisation that many existing communities feel. Immigration control is purely an issue of national government, and yet most host communities protest that they lack any real say in the issue. Many local communities in Europe have lost out to economic globalisation in ways not unconnected with marginalisation in parts of the developing world. This is a process that will see no reversal as or when trade barriers in agriculture and the service industries are finally lifted and the developing world can compete on a more level playing field. There are large parts of provincial Europe that feel too distant and remote from the changes that are affecting their lives. The problem is not the migrants themselves but the perception amongst significant numbers of people in the host community that these newcomers are both uninvited and also privileged by the attention they receive from the state and the national media. Although refugees and other forced migrants are often the victims of ‘failed states’ of the postcolonial and post-Cold War era, they at least are given by those in positions of power in Europe a quasi-identity in the form of a label which presumes a set of characteristics (usually negative) as well as a set of needs. Increasingly, marginalised working-class communities are also victims of a globalising world, yet are offered no contemporary identity – only those remaining from the past when provincial life was the dominant reality.
Immigrants, Refugees and Racism 117 It is necessary to be clear what we mean by ‘racism’ in contemporary Europe. Although the ‘genetic racism’ which prevailed over much of Europe in the first half of the twentieth century still exists, it has largely been eclipsed by what is now seen as ‘cultural racism’. Race, argue authors such as Gilroy, is seen as a cultural issue and not any longer as a biological category.9 Political leaders and the media play an important role in defining what kinds of responses to the new migration are most appropriate given that many members of the host community feel it is not a process in which they are part. Therefore, they mostly receive through the media information and experiences about refugees and migrants. And it is because of the way they have been presented that they are treated as a singular ‘out-group’ with a set of characteristics that are threatening to the host society (the ‘in-group’). In reality, migrants and refugees have little real power, influence or organised representation. Being a migrant in Europe involves many social, economic, political and cultural identities, but the external label is simply that of being an ‘outsider’ or ‘being Muslim’. Attitudes, and hence, also prejudice, may develop about practically any socially distinctive group. This presupposes that group members perceive real or imagined differences along one or more social dimensions, between their own group and the out-group.10 In some parts of Europe, such as the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands, there are significant populations of second or third generation migrants who are now fully part of the host society. These populations are not immune from racism, though they are not the primary target for those seeking to profit by the rise of xenophobia in Europe. These communities are not necessarily any more welcoming to new migrants from other parts of the world, in fact sometimes their attitudes can be more negative than the average opinion.11 However, the cutting edge of cultural racism is brought to bear on the new migrants (many of whom are asylum seekers) who are arriving from many parts of the world which were not the historical colonies of European powers. In particular, a lot of the rhetoric has increasingly focused on those of Islamic faith as they represent the majority of contemporary asylum claims. The division between ‘old’ and ‘new’ migrants is in many ways an arbitrary one, but it does highlight a trend of playing off one wave of migrants against another.
The Media and the New Migrants Immigration discourse cuts deep into the issues of power and identity and is therefore of great importance for dominant ideologues. The debate about immigration, as it is conducted in the public sphere dominated by the mass media, has very little to do with European strategic realities. The myths and archetypes that characterise the media coverage do not only disregard European self-interest for a fair and informed debate on the issue but has seduced the mass media into
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flagrant disregard for professional principles of journalistic objectivity and impartiality. These ‘primary definers’ generate the themes, the framework and the language in immigration discourse more so than in any other. And once set, this interpretative framework is extremely difficult to alter fundamentally. As sociologist Stuart Hall has written: ‘It is this structured relationship – between the media and its “powerful” sources – which begins to open up the neglected question of the ideological role of the media’.12 Words such as ‘bogus’ and the biblical metaphors of ‘tides’, ‘floods’ and ‘waves’ are commonly used by European media when describing immigration. The position of migrants as the ‘out-group’ is also re-enforced by labels that place asylum seekers and economic migrants on the very edge of our society as ‘parasites’ or ‘scroungers’. In the autumn of 2002 a survey by ‘Article 19’ of the British media revealed the way negative stereotypes were applied to asylum seekers in the Red Cross camp at Sangatte in France:13 There were numerous variations on the theme of illegality and cheating, including ‘illegal asylum seeker’ and ‘illegal refugee’. The notion of illegality came across strongly in descriptions of the asylum seekers in Sangatte. The Sun rarely called the group anything other than ‘asylum cheats’ or ‘illegals’, even when referring to the 1,200 who would be arriving with the full knowledge and blessing of the British government. A particularly stigmatising synonym employed by the Daily Mail and the Daily Express was ‘inmates’, a term usually employed to describe people who are detained as they are a danger to the public. In one article in the Daily Express, confusion created by artistic license is compounded by factual inaccuracy when Sangatte is referred to as a ‘detention centre’. The media have information about what is happening: they also command the lines of communication between those who are ‘in the know’ and the structured ignorance of the general public. In the discourse of social exclusion, we argue, it is often more important what is not said than the information given. The exclusion and discrimination are produced by the media through the use of emotive language, conceptualisation, prominence of voices and agenda setting and reproduced from the primary definers, in our case official/government sources. So, although mass media may be able to instigate the panic, use derogatory language and set the agenda in public discourse, we would argue that primary definers – political, economic, cultural and moral elite of each host community – have equal power to do so in contemporary Europe. Institutional racism in the media is therefore just a reflection of the state of affairs in any other institution and it is illustrative of lack of leadership or enlightenment to respond to that kind of challenge. Where mass media has failed is perhaps a reflection of our time. Race for profit, circulation and viewing figures, shift towards populist entertainment versus factual reporting, means that facts about immigration and forced migration are usually confined to the Internet. There is no shortage of good
Immigrants, Refugees and Racism 119 information on the issue should the media wish to look for it. NGOs, UN agencies, think-tanks, academics and Governments all produce research on the reasons why people migrate and the contribution they make to host-communities. The Institute for Public Policy Research showed that during 1999–2000 migrants made a net fiscal contribution to the UK economy even after all the costs associated with the asylum system had been subtracted. Even the ‘asylum problem’ faced by Europe needs to be kept in clear global perspective.14 The vast majority of refugees can be found in the developing world, accounting for 72 per cent of the world’s estimated 12 million refugees between 1992 and 2001. At the end of 2000, Pakistan alone had a refugee population of two million. Tanzania had 18.93 refugees for every 1,000 inhabitants and 80.15 refugees per $1 million GDP. In comparison, even if all 655,000 people who had sought asylum in the UK over the past decade had been granted refugee status, this would mean that there were 10.88 refugees for every 1,000 inhabitants and 0.4 refugees per $1million GDP. In 2002 the UK was ranked 1st in Europe in terms of the absolute number of applications, but in terms of applications per head was ranked 8th. In 2002 the UNHCR ranked the UK 32nd in the world on the basis of its size/GDP/population and number of refugees. The debate about asylum has little to do with the realities of seeking asylum, and the fact that the argument is constantly being played upside down is the best proof of it. Asylum debate is just an expression of a more complex identity crisis. Asylum seekers are the convenient ‘other’ through which the host group defines itself. Every identity is a complex negotiation of who we are and who we are not. However, when we are no longer sure who ‘we’ are, the only way to define ourselves is through what we think we are not – the ‘other’. Simplified, the argument could be put as follows: if asylum seekers are criminals, bogus, lazy scroungers, dirty and sick, the implication is that ‘we’ are the opposite. If they are coming here that means that we have something that they want – and we should better defend it or hold on to it. The European electorate is caught between a quasi-debate on immigration pumped by the tabloid press and extremist politicians on the one hand, and hegemonic humanitarianism promoted by new centre left, on the other. They both lead to an erosion of the fundamental principles that underpin European society itself. The debate as it currently stands, as well as the way in which it is conducted, demeans not just the migrants but all of us.
Extreme Politicians and the New Migrants Pim Fortuyn, the late leader of sentiment against new immigration to the Netherlands stated in an interview early in 2002:15 All I’m doing is making the problems of a multicultural society open for discussion which is something that the ‘left church’, which is how we refer to the Dutch Labour Party in Holland, and the extreme left have been making impossible for decades now. And the people are delighted that they are now
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The instant labelling of Fortuyn as ‘right-wing’ seemed curious given his more liberal position on other social issues. Fortuyn was classified that way because he wanted to end all new immigration to the Netherlands until existing immigrants had been properly ‘integrated’ into Dutch society. In particular, he was particularly attacking a stereotype of all Muslim immigrants because of their alleged opposition to homosexuality and feminism. As one commentator shortly after his murder commented: ‘Fortuyn should have been placed on the far-left, but with an asterisk attached’. In this way, the trend that Pim Fortuyn represented presents a much greater challenge to Europe than the more traditional far-right extremists, which now have a permanent political presence in every country. Rather than wishing to preserve the ‘status quo’ of Europe based on historical prejudices and hegemony – Fortuyn defended his extremism in terms of European values of enlightenment and individual rights. He was therefore a blend between a ‘cultural racist’ and a ‘European idealist’ but one that saw the cultural norms of Dutch society and those of immigrant cultures as being irreconcilable, unless the immigrants fully integrated into Dutch society. Fortuyn would use the ‘clash of civilisations’ language to define the divisions in Dutch society, a paradigm that also underpins neo-conservatism in the US and George Bush’s ‘war on terror’. It is worth noting, however, that the debate on Dutch integration policy was initiated not by Fortuyn, but by Paul Scheffer (a leading left-wing commentator) in an article published in 2000.16 He described the past ‘15 years’ as a ‘multicultural drama’ and attacked the many taboos and political correctness surrounding race, culture and integration in the Netherlands. It is possible that Scheffer did not predict that this debate would quickly become one about immigration, through which the position of placing an embargo on all new immigration until existing immigrants had become ‘truly Dutch’ would become politically credible. It is therefore perhaps only a matter of time before we see more explicitly ‘anti-immigration’ figureheads rising from the ‘enlightened left’ as well as the ‘extreme right’ of European politics. Such commentators will seek to define the much longed for ‘integration’ less as ‘multiculturalism’ but more as an ‘assimilation’ to existing European or national norms. The effects of such rhetoric and the delaying of the time when Europe faces up to its need for immigration might be damaging to us all. The author Peter Drucker, who has written on society and economics for much of the twentieth century, predicts that during this century immigration will remain one of the USA’s great economic advantages over Europe. He writes that: ‘It is not numbers alone that will give America an advantage. Even more important, the country is culturally attuned to immigration, and long ago learned to integrate immigrants into its society and economy’.17
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Political Leaders and the New Migration There is a general lack of enthusiasm amongst the political leaders of Europe in leading a constructive debate on immigration and European identity at a time when the speed of social integration between European Union member states is being checked by negative public responses in national referenda. In fact, as has already been stated, the temptation of winning some short-term gain by playing up the stereotypes has proved too great for even some of our best-informed leaders. The dichotomy between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ migrant is one encouraged by Government rhetoric – the ‘invited’ versus the ‘uninvited’. For example, there seems to be a greater political willingness to allow the growth of an undocumented labour market than to start a political debate that might allow asylum seekers the right of working. And it remains a political debate still dominated by the asylum issue. If economic migration is in Europe’s self-interest for the decades to come, then the debate should primarily be about ‘economic migration’ and not ‘asylum’. If the demographic predictions are correct and their societal impact understood, then economic migration will need to start to dwarf any refugee intake during most years, in much the way it does in the US. Much of the rhetoric and political passion will follow the larger migration debate and therefore the reform of European asylum policy can be left to the experts in line with Europe’s commitments to international human rights law. Whilst there can be ‘quotas’ for economic migration, refugee protection is better thought of in terms of ‘targets’ – needing to be constantly reviewed and adjusted in the light of humanitarian need and the rights of individuals. The public debate on European migration needs to tackle head on the issues of demographics, failing pension funds and immigration. It needs to offer the people of Europe a set of economic and social choices about the kind of life they want for themselves and their children. The issue of cultural identity and integration is an important part of this, but should not be the driver. The case for increased migration based on ‘enlightened self-interest’ needs to be put by mainstream elected leaders in opposition to the voices of fear from the ideologues. The vision must be of a holistic migration policy with the three doors of economic, social (family reunion and marriage) and humanitarian (asylum and refugee) migration. The vision needs to be one of clear migration management, i.e. the inflow can be largely controlled with some flexibility for refugees, balanced by a debate on European social identity and what integration really means in a modern society. Leaders need to be clear that ‘multiculturalism’ remains the ideal and requires not just tolerance but concessions from both the host community and the immigrant communities.
Where Will the Leadership Come From? The conclusion that there is a leadership deficit on migration issues in Europe seems inescapable. National political leaders have been unwilling or unable to
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occupy this territory and instead the loudest voices have come from the ‘cultural racists’ or those motivated by them. It is unclear where this ceding of responsibility might lead us but it is hard to believe that the likely consequences will be in anyone’s interests other than those trying to exploit the political vacuum for their own ends. It is a sad yet realistic reflection that we must look beyond our nationally elected leaders for leadership on migration, at least for the next few years. So where should we look? Local or Regional Politicians Although the cities of Paris, Berlin and London have no direct control over inward migration, they have over the centuries clearly benefited from the phenomenon. In London, for example, immigration accounts for all of the rapid net growth in the city’s population since the early 1990s. Provisional estimates indicate that of London’s total resident population of 7.3 million, about 26 per cent were born outside the UK.18 The London Mayor, Ken Livingston, gave evidence to a recent European Union hearing on the return of illegal immigrants stating:19 Immigration is crucial for London’s dynamic social and economic development. It has given the city a unique cultural and ethnic diversity. Ethnic minorities make up around one-third of London’s population, with Black and Asian communities alone accounting for 28 percent of its residents. More than 300 languages are spoken in its streets and homes. All this helps to drive innovation, enrich the city’s skills base, foster international links and enhance the city’s appeal as a place to invest. In this way, the Mayor of London has played a similar rhetorical role to that of Mayor Guiliani (Republican – New York) and Mayor Brown (Democratic – San Francisco) did in the US during the anti-immigrant backlash of the mid-1990s. As such, it matters less what the political orientation of the local leader is and more their realisation that their metropolis has its own unique identity built on migration. This might pit the locally elected leaders against the policy direction of national leaders of the same party, as was the case for Willie Brown during the passage of 1995–1996 Immigration Bill in the US, under the Presidency of Bill Clinton, and more recently for Ken Livingston under Tony Blair’s Labour Government in the UK, the London Mayor’s erstwhile party. Although these local leaders have no direct influence on national immigration policy, they can try to lead the local debate based on local research Religious and Cultural Leaders The most practised religions in Europe, Catholicism and Islam, can both play a pro-active role in mobilising opinion on migration and integration. In 1965, Vatican Council II promulgated an official document – the Declaration Nostra aetate – which contain these words about Islam:20
Immigrants, Refugees and Racism 123 The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of Heaven and earth who has spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own … Over the centuries many quarrels and dissensions have arisen between Christians and Muslims. The sacred Council now pleads with all to forget the past, and urges that a sincere effort be made to achieve mutual understanding; for the benefit of all men, let them together preserve and promote peace, social justice and moral values. More recently, many Church agencies have played an increasingly active role in defending the rights of immigrants and refugees. This includes the present Pope, John Paul II: The condition of legal irregularity does not imply a diminution in the dignity of the migrant’, the Pope said. In his message, he asked the faithful to ‘guard against the birth of forms of neo-racism and xenophobic behaviour, which try to make our [immigrant] brothers an expiatory goat of difficult social situations (Corriere della Sera, November 18, 1996)’.21 This is not to argue that all religious leaders are pro-migrant, nor that they should be, but that there is a clearly stated moral position on the rights of all migrants, be they ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’. Another example, from the Netherlands, would be that of induction courses into Dutch society for Muslim clerics, including education about soft drugs, prostitution, gay marriage and euthanasia. Although initiated by the Dutch state, the courses have the involvement of the Multicultural Institute in Utrecht. The aim was to inform and involve imams as much as possible without confronting their religious beliefs. The first participants of the course ‘graduated’ in early 2003 and it remains to be seen if it will help inform the debate on cultural norms in a post-Fortuyn environment. Business Leaders In 2002, Kofi Annan noted the potential role that Business leaders could play in leading the debate on the future of international refugee and migration policy.22 This aspiration is built partly on the long-standing pro-immigrant editorial lines of the Wall Street Journal, the Economist and the Financial Times, as well as the reality that many successful business leaders are themselves migrants. What has been less evident are business leaders in Europe who are taking up that a public position which opposes the policies of nationally elected Governments. Behind closed doors, there is growing interest in human rights as it relates to refugeeproducing countries or the impact of ‘carrier liability fines’ and visa imposition on the major European sea, air and land carriers. Occasionally one of these companies will come out publicly in order to take legal action. For example:
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Cultural and Identity Security Occasionally these companies come out publicly in order to take legal action. In 2001 Eurotunnel helped highlight the issue as it started legal action in France and in the UK to try to avoid fines for persons found clandestinely entering the UK. As the ‘carriers liability fines’ were extended to Eurotunnel, it was quite reasonably seeking relief from courts. The company argued that it is not the fault of private companies that people are persecuted abroad and seek protection.
This does not necessarily make Eurotunnel pro-migrant but it does declare their stake in the migration process and the importance for Governments in leading the debate instead of ceding it to them (and therefore their passengers) in terms of fines, private security and other costs. Similarly, the Paris Chamber of Commerce issued a report in 2000 challenging the figures on ‘illegal immigration’ used by French politicians and pointing out how very low the quota for legal economic migration remains, even for the highly skilled.23 However, such reports remain ‘political dynamite’ given the high unemployment levels in the country and so ‘Medef ’ the French employer’s federation remains agnostic on the issue.24 A growing number of European companies have a declared public interest in increasing the diversity of their workforce, such as the ‘Plural’ initiative in Sweden.25 Diversity most often means increasing the ethnic diversity of their workforce and this in turn means the employment of first or second-generation migrants. An increasingly polarised political debate on immigration will not suit the interests of these companies and it remains to be seen when we might hear the beginnings of a business voice publicly urging elected leaders to be more responsible and strategic in this area of public policy. The business case is strongest when you look at the way transnational companies interact with migrants in countries of origin (e.g. the extractive sector), the migration process itself (e.g. the carriers) and as part of the European labour market (e.g. diversity of workforce).26 International Community Collectively, when not appealing to national electorates, most European governments accept the need for comprehensive reform and some progressive thinking. Ruud Lubbers, the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands and now the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has taken an active interest in wider migration issues, realising that things will not get better for refugees in Europe until the wider migration debate is under-way. European Governments are giving increasing competence under the Treaty of Amsterdam for the European Commission to show some leadership on migration issues, although immigration control will remain a state prerogative. National governments also meeting under the ‘Bern Initiative’ are calling for more open thinking on migration. The United Nations has also recently announced the establishment of a Global Commission on Migration to produce a set of clear recommendations to the international community, a
Immigrants, Refugees and Racism 125 process that the ‘Club of the Hague on the future of international refugee and migration policy’ has already started. There should be no shortage of ideas flowing from these initiatives in the next few years. The challenge will be for specific leaders to start the wider dialogue with the European people themselves.
Ideas from North America It is true that there are significant differences between the way the debate is framed in the US and Europe, not least that the former perceives itself as the ‘land of immigrants’. US Census Bureau data shows that the ‘white majority’ will cease to be the majority around the year 2050 and that a reduction in immigration quotas might delay this date a little but will not change the inevitable. Birth rates amongst the Latino and Asian American minorities outstrip that of White America (with the exception of the Mormons), and so, wherever you stand on the immigration debate, there are some absolute truths that all commentators need to acknowledge. This does not deny that there is not a significant anti-immigration tendency driven by cultural, economic and even environmental concerns. It is the way that the pro-immigration lobby managed to seize back the momentum in the mid- to late-1990s which provides a valuable lesson to Europe on leadership. Proposition 187 in California, and similar ballot initiatives in other US States, saw significant grassroots action against the educational and medical entitlements of ‘undocumented’ migrants. The ‘us’ versus ‘them’ discourse of the time was very similar to that of contemporary Europe, as was the position of the media and many elected leaders in California.27 This set the backdrop for the 1995 Immigration Bill (S1394), introduced by Republican Senator Alan Simpson, and which planned to cut all legal immigration to the US (economic, social and refugee) from about one million people a year to two-thirds of a million (a 33 per cent cut). The momentum behind this Bill was such that it seemed that President Clinton, whose own views on the issue were not entirely clear, would sign the Act into law. There was also tacit support for a cut in immigration from some of the Labour unions and therefore sectors of the Democrat Party. The response from the pro-immigrant lobby was remarkable in that over a period of several months the National Immigration Forum was able to marshal support from several different constituencies to defeat the proposal. This included not just the pro-immigration organisations and church groups but also local politicians of both political parties (including Mayors Brown and Giuliani) and, perhaps most importantly, a clear Corporate voice against any cuts. This took the form of the National Association of Manufacturers and in particular a certain Mr Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, who visited Washington DC and warned the proposed cuts would force computer companies out of the US.28 Immigrants may boost the US economic growth in many ways that are hard to measure. Chinese or Indian immigrants started almost 30 per cent of new companies in Silicon Valley between 1995 and 1998. Some depressed regions actively court immigrants: the chamber of commerce at Nashville, Tennessee,
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sees them as a ‘source of dynamism’, as does Tom Vilsack, the governor of Iowa, whose state has a meat-packing industry relying largely on Bosnian refugees.29 If some of these economic realities are also true of Europe, when will our elected officials and business leaders start changing the dominant rhetoric of exclusion? There is some evidence that the US already has a clear competitive advantage against Europe in attracting the best software specialists from India and Eastern Europe. The 20,000 places on a ‘green card’ scheme for software specialists announced by the German Government in 2000 have yet all to be filled and one of the reasons cited by some would-be migrants is that they would prefer to live in the more multicultural and tolerant US.30 With regard to refugee policy, one of the more positive models in administration and management is the Canadian model. In Canada refugee determination process is the responsibility of the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), an independent administrative body which consist of several divisions. The Refugee Protection Division is in charge of domestic applications while Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) decides refugee protection claims made outside Canada, in Canadian embassies and consulates. Detailed analysis of the structure of this system, its quality of decision making, recognition rates, etc., would probably identify numerous shortfalls from the point of view of human rights activists and refugee advocates. From a European perspective it seems like an unobtainable fantasy. Apart from independency, IRB’s rhetoric is that of transparency and accountability. But where IRB moves into the league of its own is in its effort to move beyond rhetoric. For example, the Research Directorate with Documentation Centres generates the information on which decisions are made around the country.
Conclusion The coming together of corporate, religious, local governments and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) to promote migration has yet to occur in Europe. Not only are corporate leaders more cautious of speaking out on this issue but also the NGOs are largely divided between those defending the rights of asylum seekers and refugees, from those that work on wider issues of immigration and racism. However, as the national political climate becomes increasingly more hostile and the need for strategic leadership more apparent, maybe – just maybe – we will see an European equivalent of what happened nearly ten years ago in the US. It is worth noting that for populations of nearly equivalent size, the legal immigration quotas to the US remain much higher than those for the whole of the European Union. Leadership by non-state actors alone can only, however, be a short-term measure. In the medium to long-term clear political leadership will be required at the national level. Maybe the first sign of the reversal of political rhetoric towards tolerance and genuine humanitarianism is heralded in the German Chancellor Schröder’s attack on opposition parties on 29 November 2000 when he said that giving asylum to refugees was a question of ‘self-respect’ for
Immigrants, Refugees and Racism 127 Germany and progress in civilisation made since the end of fascism. Germany, he said, needs no ‘messy notions of leading culture’ but ‘more internationalism and modernism’.31 It is very unlikely that Chancellor Schröder will be this leader, but he is the closest to it that currently exists amongst European heads of states. Perhaps it is the stirrings of something that will emerge once other sections of society have made their voices heard. Human rights also need to play a central role in this process and the acceptance of economic, social and cultural rights as part of the normative framework for European identity is an essential precursor for a sustainable migration policy. There will need to be significant developments in the understanding of what ‘cultural rights’ mean to Europeans and migrants alike before the ‘cultural racists’ can be challenged adequately. It is imperative that European Governments educate their populations, and not just their immigrants, in what global citizenship means and why Christian or Islamic values need to be understood within the same societal framework. At the same time, it is worth taking some of the wisdom of Edward Said by not chasing one single European identity which is the lowest common denominator between its diverse constituents:32 Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or black, or Western, or Oriental … there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. A European identity need not just be about one thing, and the debate we so badly need should liberate the very many distinctive identities which exist now and in the future. Europe should not only be inclusive but also thrive on the diversity that migration brings. After all, Europe has always been a diverse place.
Notes 1 Tony Blair, 30 September 2003, speech to British Labour Party Conference. 2 European Commission, Draft EU Constitution, Official Journal of the European Union, ‘Information and Notices’, Article II-18, series C, 169, 18 July 2003. 3 Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General (1998) – message by Kofi Annan on the Occasion of the International Day of Older Persons, 1 October 1998; United Nations, Division for Social Policy and Development: Bulletin on Ageing 2/3 (1998). 4 Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Berlin (www.diw.de) 5 Phil Mullan, The Imaginary Time Bomb, London, I B Tauris, 2000. 6 ‘How and when to open the door to migrants’, The Economist, 2–8 November 2002. 7 Romano Prodi, Un’idea dell’Europa, Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino, 1999. 8 Jürgen Habermas, Die postnationale Konstellation: Politische Essays, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1998. 9 Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation, London: Hutchinson, 1987. 10 Teun A. van Dijk, Communicating Racism: Ethnic Prejudice in Thought and Talk, Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, 1987.
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11 IPPR, Attitudes to Race Surveys, London: Institute for Public Policy Research, February 1997. 12 Stuart Hall, ‘The Social Production of News’, in: S. Hall, C. Critcher, T. Jefferson, J. Clarke and B. Roberts (eds), Policing the Crisis, Mugging the State, and Law and Order, London: The Macmillan Press, 1978. 13 What’s the story? Media Representation of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK, London: Article 19, 2003, www.article19.org.uk. 14 Institute of Public Policy Research, Asylum in the UK: an IPPR Fact File, London: IPPR, 2002. 15 ‘On The Record’, BBC Television – Broadcast, 5 May 2002. 16 Article in NRC Handelsblad, 2000, cited by Joanne van Selm in the ‘Netherlands’ profile at www.migrationinformation.org, Migration Policy Institute: Washington, DC. 17 Peter Drucker, ‘A survey of the near future’, The Economist, 3–9 November 2001. 18 Estimates for 2000/01 by the Greater London Association: based on Office of National Statistics (Labour Force Survey) data and quoted subject to validation which could lead to revision of these figures. 19 Statement in evidence by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, to the European Community return policy on illegal residents, public hearing – Brussels, 16 July 2002. 20 Reference Nostra Aetate, Declaration on the relationship of the church to non-Christian religions, Second Vatican Council, October 28, 1965. 21 “How the Cresent Moon intends to eclipse the Cross, part two” by Atila Sinke Guimarães, November 12–18, 2001, volume 12, no. 156 which can be found at: http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/2001Nov/nov12bat.htm 22 Declaration of the Hague on the Future of International Refugee and Migration Policies, The Peace Palace, The Hague, November 2002, Society for International Development, The Hague (2002); www.sidint.org 23 Jean-Paul Vermes cited in The Economist, ‘Bridging Europe’s skills gap’, 31 March – 6 April, 2001, pp. 81–82. 24 ‘Bridging Europe’s skills gap’, The Economist, 31 March – 6 April 2001. 25 The ‘Pural’ Initiative is coordinated by Respect (Europe) in Stockholm, www.respecteurope.com. 26 John Morrison, ‘Business and Migration: A business case for protecting migrants’ rights?’, Development, 2003: 46(3), Rome: Society for International Development. 27 Hugh Mehan, ‘The discourse of the illegal immigration debate: a case study in the politics of representation’, Discourse and Society, 1997. 28 The Washington Post, unknown article, 29 November 1995. 29 ‘A survey of migration’, The Economist, 2–8 November 2002. 30 Ibid. 31 ‘Schroeder lashes German opposition over immigration’, Agency France-Press, Berlin, November 29, 2000. 32 Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (Vintage: London, 1993).
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Language and Immigration Susan Forbes Martin1
Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English become a colony of aliens [sic], who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of us Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs any more than they can acquire our complexion?2
Benjamin Franklin, speaking about German immigrants to Pennsylvania during the 1750s, echoed a sentiment that has pervaded American attitudes towards immigration since the founding of the nation. Early recognition that immigration brought linguistic as well as cultural diversity has led to recurrent doubts about the capacity of the country to absorb newcomers. While each wave of immigration has been successfully incorporated into the American society, Americans remain ambivalent about immigrants and their impact on the country. Looking through rose-coloured glasses at their own immigrant forebears, they nevertheless worry that today’s newcomers will fail to become fully integrated. The American response to lingual diversity has been complex, seeing English language acquisition as important in its own right, and as a symbol of national cohesion. As discussed in this chapter, the degree to which Americans have tolerated the retention of foreign languages has been influenced by a range of political, economic and social issues that were, at best, minimally associated with language itself. In turn, attitudes of the majority have influenced the degree to which immigrants could access language-training programmes and make the contacts needed to learn English. In addition, the attitudes of immigrants about the broader American society influenced the degree to which they sought to learn English and distance themselves from their ancestral language roots. The picture presented in this chapter is in sharp contrast to the experiences of the multilingual countries of Europe, which largely brought together territories already composed of different language groups. From its beginning, America has been a largely monolingual country. Although small numbers of native Americans, Spanish, Dutch and other speakers were absorbed through conquest or purchase of territory, and words from their languages quickly became part of the American lexicon, they were outnumbered by the more numerous English speakers who dominated the politics and commerce of the country. Most of those who spoke languages other than English came to America through immigration.
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By and large, immigrants were expected to learn English as quickly as possible, an expectation that was largely upheld throughout American history. This chapter begins with a discussion of the formation of the American identity, as defined by linguistic homogeneousness. It then discusses the evolution of American attitudes towards language during the major waves of immigration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The chapter concludes with discussion of current issues arising from English language acquisition and retention among the newest immigrants.
Language and the Formation of an American Nation Language grew as an issue deserving national attention leading up to and during the era of the American Revolution when Americans were searching for symbols of national integrity. Afraid that the United States covered too large and diverse an area and population to lend itself to a republican form of government, the founders of the nation sought evidence of an underlying homogeneity that would justify their experiment. An obvious common element was language, as almost all Americans (even the despised Germans) shared English as their primary tongue. Language, in the words of John Locke, was ‘the great instrument and common tie of society’.3 In Enlightenment thought, for men to live together in a community, they needed to share a common means of communication. It was essential that they understand each other. Words could easily be misconstrued because of the symbolic nature of language. The chance of misunderstanding increased greatly among those who spoke different languages. To the Enlightenment mind, multilingualism could not work in a properly functioning society since it would seriously endanger the common good. By recognizing and supporting the dominance of one national language, the founders could ensure that the new republic would endure. As Noah Webster put it, ‘our political harmony is therefore concerned in a uniformity of language’.4 Unlike multilingual European States that formed around existing and generally geographically separate language groups, the challenge of the new American republic was to incorporate a continuing flow of immigrants into a single, unified nation. Such countries as Switzerland and Belgium confederated linguistically distinct territories, becoming multination-states. They reduced potential friction among the different language groups by granting considerable autonomy to the smaller, incorporated units, which were able to retain their own languages. By contrast, the United States joined 13 colonies that, at the time of independence, had a principal shared language but expected to see the continuing arrival of immigrants who spoke other languages. Afraid that the new country covered too large and diverse an area and population to lend itself to the republican form of government, the Founding Fathers sought evidence of an underlying homogeneity that would justify the American experiment. Shared language became that justification. What was less clear initially was the nature of the shared language. To many of those who had fought for Independence, retaining the language of the mother
Language and Immigration 131 country seemed antithetical to the needs of the new republic. Rumors abounded that the country would adopt a new language. Although there was never any serious possibility of it happening, it became Pennsylvania folklore that the new Congress would adopt German as the language of the country. By some accounts, New Englanders urged that the official language be Hebrew, in recognition of the Old Testament heritage and the American identity as the chosen people.5 Thomas Jefferson and other members of the American Philosophical Society studied and wrote treatises on Native American languages, but deepseated concerns about racial differences between the settlers and the original inhabitants precluded serious consideration of these tongues as the national language.6 Much more successful were efforts to define the English spoken in America as a language distinct from the English spoken in Britain. Noah Webster, one of the first American lexicographers, described the various reasons for an expected divergence in the two languages: [In] America, … numerous local causes, such as a new country, new associations of people, new combinations of ideas in arts and science and some intercourse with tribes wholly unknown in Europe, will introduce new words … [The eventual result must be] a language in North America, as different from the future language of England, as the modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish are from the German, or from one another. That America was a nation of immigrants had a profound influence on this view. One of the major assets of the country, contributing to the vitality of American English, was the presence of other languages in the United States. American English absorbed words from these other languages, changing them to reflect the American reality. At the same time, a pause in immigration from the Revolution until about 1830 allowed linguistic nationalism to take hold in the new republic. Most of the earliest efforts to introduce language uniformity were aimed at those who already lived in the United States. Mostly, the effort was to reduce regional variations in language. Geographic mobility in the new republic helped facilitate this process, as the movement westward reduced the clustering of ethnic groups that had contributed to foreign language retention. New Englanders moved into upstate New York areas that had been dominated by the Dutch. German farmers began to move to mid-Western states to find inexpensive land to bequeath to their children. Social mobility further facilitated language uniformity – and vice versa. In America, there were few bars to upward mobility, and certainly, language was not one of them – in contrast to many European countries. The route to correct speech was generally education and books rather than class or geography. The early nineteenth century saw a proliferation in dictionaries and spellers. Those such as Webster who produced them and encouraged language uniformity also promoted free universal education. Americans sought and found in education a panacea: with proper schooling all could share in the benefits of American
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society regardless of socio-economic background or, important for the purposes of this chapter, place of birth. How linguistic nationalism and the faith in education would survive a renewal of mass migration in the years after 1830 is the subject of the next section.
Mass Immigration and Language: 1830–1920 Between 1830 and 1860, almost 4.5 million European immigrants arrived in the United States. Never before had the country had to absorb so large a number of newcomers in so short a time. The range of countries from which immigration took place also increased, with fewer people coming from Britain and more from Ireland, Germany and Scandinavian countries. In addition, under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States gained control over large areas of what had been Mexico. Although not strictly immigrants because they had already been living in what became US territory, under the treaty Spanish speakers found themselves under American rule. The numbers were relatively small, however. The 1850 Census, for example, enumerated only 13,000 Mexican nationals living in the United States. Germans formed the largest non-English speaking immigrant population in the ante-bellum period. By 1850, the Census included almost 600,000 native Germans in the country, about one quarter of all foreign born. German immigrants quickly established associations and private schools that emphasized bilingualism. These organizations sought to help newcomers adjust to life in America while also preserving German culture and language. Such cities as Milwaukee soon took on a German-American flavour, a mixture of the old and the new world. In the1850s, German immigrants opened the various German and English Academies and High Schools that offered bilingual education programmes that allowed students to begin instruction in German before transitioning into English. The public schools soon followed this pattern. Wisconsin passed legislation in 1854 permitting bilingual public schools. The persistence of German language retention alarmed some Americans who saw the new immigration as a threat to the republic. An 1820 editorial in the North American Review sounded an early alarm: By what inconceivable perversity are these gentlemen [who seek to retain the German language] brought to think that it is an advantage to speak a language which your neighbor cannot understand, to be ignorant of the language in which the laws of the land you live in are made and administered, and to shut yourself out, be a Judaic nationality of spirit and manners, from half the social privileges of life?7 The magazine advised Germans ‘instead of wishing to cherish and keep up their peculiarities of language and manners, … get over and forget them as soon as possible’. Interestingly, the magazine evidenced no fear of immigration itself; rather it held out full admission into the intellectual and political life of the
Language and Immigration 133 country to those who embraced the English language, regardless of their place of origin. By contrast, others concerned about the different cultural, religious or linguistic roots of the new immigration were far less sanguine that immigrants could become Americans. Out of these fears emerged the first major movement to restrict immigration to the United States. The American, or Know-Nothing Party, campaigned on a platform of rigid restrictions on immigration and naturalization. Concerns about native language retention became a key part of their platform. They argued that language differences were evidence of irreconcilable cultural differences between immigrants and Americans. They wanted the borders closed to all but those who already shared the prevalent American language and customs. Language, culture and religion became closely tied together in the assault on immigration. As Catholics from Ireland and Germany, in particular, arrived, many Protestants felt threatened although they remained in the majority. One Know-Nothing pamphlet assailed annexation of Mexico, as well, because it would mean ‘five million Papists in our midst – four millions and a half being of foreign birth and four millions speaking a foreign language – all taught from infancy to hate and detest Protestantism as a crime…’.8 These sentiments were not universal or even representative of the majority of Americans. Aside from the Know-Nothings, there was little evidence of linguistic nativism in the pre-Civil War period. Generally Americans were optimistic that immigrants from different language backgrounds would quickly adopt English as well as other elements of American society. This situation changed with the wave of immigration that began after the Civil War and radically transformed the origins of the American population. Following the war, immigration slowly began to take hold again, reaching a new high in the 1880s when about 5.5 million immigrants arrived during the decade. Another 16 million arrived during the next quarter century, with 1.5 million arriving in one year, 1908. Once more, the origins of the new immigrants changed as the numbers grew. No longer from the British Isles and Western and Northern Europe, the newcomers came from Southern and Eastern Europe. Just as the ante-bellum Germans and Irish appeared more foreign than the British immigrants, the new immigrants appeared more foreign than the previous wave. Language differences marked an important component of the new immigration. Whereas in 1880 over half of the foreign born population of the country had come from English speaking countries, by 1920, they represented a small fraction of the total. Rather, the immigration brought people who spoke languages not generally found in the United States, including Italian, Yiddish, Greek, and Slavic languages. None of these languages shared the English/Germanic roots of the earlier immigrant languages. More concerning for many citizens, a sizeable proportion of the new immigrants found it difficult to speak English even some time after arrival. In 1890 the US Census began asking the foreign born if they could speak English. The phrasing of the questions changed between 1890/1900 and 1910, making it
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difficult to compare the results, but 15.6 per cent were unable to speak English in 1890 and 22.8 per cent in 1910. By 1920, when the arrival of new immigrants had slowed down, only 11 per cent reported that they were unable to speak English. Over time, it appeared that most immigrants learned English but the process could be difficult for the first generation. The Dillingham Commission, established by Congress to examine the impact of immigration, confirmed this finding. In a household survey in the woollen and worsted goods manufacturing area, the Commission found that about 40 per cent of those in the country for five years or less could speak English, whereas 87.5 per cent of those in the US for more than 10 years spoke English. The age at the time of arrival also affected the results. Among those who entered before the age of 14, 92 per cent could speak English while only 50 per cent of those who arrived after 14 could do so. More than 95 per cent of the US-born children of immigrants spoke English fluently. As in the earlier period, immigrants soon established associations, schools and other institutions to help them deal with language differences. Also as in the earlier period, the task of these institutions was to help immigrants retain their native language while adapting to the new country. The task was facilitated for many immigrants by the proliferation of foreign language newspapers and journals. During the period from 1884 to 1920, foreign language papers increased from 794 to 1,052. Not surprisingly, this period saw a decline in the number of German papers, as immigration from Germany declined, and a rise in publications from the new language groups. The most important task for the foreign language press was to interpret American society to the immigrant in an understandable language and manner. Aware of their role as a mediator between immigrant and larger society, the papers found various ways to accomplish the task. The Jewish Daily Forward, for example, included an advice column. Readers would send in questions that the editors would answer in the paper. While most of the foreign language press advocated retention of the mother tongue (not surprisingly since their circulation depended on it), they also encouraged their readers to learn to speak and read English and to become American citizens. Readership of the foreign press declined with the second generation. In what has become a typical pattern in the United States, the children of immigrants quickly learned English. Until their parents became more conversant with English, the second generation’s greater command of the new language often eroded traditional notions of parental authority. As Ida Hull wrote of Italian immigrants: as the children learn English, they begin to interpret for their parents and so have a voice in family councils. Soon they feel quite able to make their own decisions, and in no need of guidance from their parents. This dependence on the children is most irksome to the father, for it deposes him from his position of authority and makes his children at least partners, if not leaders in family enterprise.9
Language and Immigration 135 For many immigrant families, of course, the ability of their children to learn English was a mark of success in the new country. The relationship between native language retention and acquisition of English was never a clear one; maintenance of the mother tongue inside the home never precluded English outside of it. The pull of economic life contributed strongly to English language acquisition, particularly for the second generation and in places without a strong immigrant enclave. In communities with large numbers of immigrants speaking the same foreign language, lack of English would not necessarily be an economic hindrance. In many communities, however, no such concentrations occurred and English became the common language. Even in ethnic enclaves, native language dominance tended not to survive into the second or third generation. A Scandinavian writing at the end of the nineteenth century summed up the immigrant dilemma: The question no longer is: how shall we learn English so that we may take part in the social life of America and partake of her benefits; the big question is: how can we preserve the language of our ancestors here, in a strange environment, and pass on to our descendents the treasures which it contains.10 This was not the question on the minds of many Americans born in the United States. For them, the new immigration represented a growing threat to their way of life. The strange languages, customs and religions of the Southern and Eastern Europeans made them suspect to a country that was still largely of British ancestry, English-speaking and Protestant. Beginning in 1882, Congress responded to the anxiety by a series of laws that restricted immigration. The first laws excluded undesirable immigrants – convicts, lunatics, idiots and others who might become public charges. These laws did little to stem the tide, however, and opponents of immigration began to amass new arguments in defence of restrictions. Fighting strong economic forces that sought large numbers of employees for the new industrial order, the restrictionists tended to construct arguments based on the social and cultural inferiority of the newcomers. Language ability and literacy were used to differentiate the desirable from the undesirable immigrant. As early as the eighteenth century, theories developed that emphasized an overall evolution from primitive, physical languages to mature, verbal and symbolic ones. Under these theories, cultures that used a great deal of hand movement to describe objects or feelings could be considered of lower order than those that relied on purely verbal manner of expression. Moreover, cultures that used oral traditions to preserve values and ideas appeared to be more primitive than ones with strong literary forms. Given this understanding of language, it was not surprising that immigrants who were not literate themselves or came from cultures with strong oral and physical forms of communication would be considered less developed. Happily for the restrictionists, many of the new immigrants fit this categorization. Attention turned in Congress to passage of legislation limiting immigration and naturalization on the basis of language and literacy skills. Various arguments
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developed in support and opposition to the linkages being made. They differed somewhat when language and literacy requirements were applied to citizenship as compared to admission. Supporters of an English language requirement for naturalization argued that knowledge of English was a necessary prerequisite for intelligent participation in civic affairs. Opponents countered that American principles could be understood in translation. They further argued that an English language requirement would discriminate against those who could not learn English because of long and hard work schedules. When the naturalization provision was debated in 1906, one member of Congress remarked: ‘this section might be described with perfect accuracy as a device to shut out the laborious and admit the loquacious’.11 On sum, the arguments in favour of a language requirement for naturalization swayed Congress, which passed legislation that ‘no alien shall hereafter be naturalized or admitted as a citizen of the United States who cannot speak the English language’. Attention then turned to the requirements for admission to the United States as an immigrant. Although some proponents of restriction pressed for admission of only those who spoke English, most opponents of immigration focused on passage of a literacy test. The thinking was that those literate in their own language would be able to learn English more readily and would be less ‘foreign’ than the immigrants coming into the country. At first, a coalition of ethnic groups and business were able to defeat the literacy measures introduced in Congress. By 1917, however, they had lost the votes and a literacy requirement was imposed on all new immigrants, except those fleeing their countries as refugees. While the restrictionists had assumed the new law would immediately reduce inflows of immigrants, which were already down because of the First World War, immigration resumed after the conflict ended. Attention then turned to more direct means of limiting admissions, with imposition of numerical quotas based on the national origins of the applicants. Using the US Census, immigration levels were set according to the national origins of the US population. Because the overall population was still dominated by the earlier waves of immigration, very few numbers were available to the new immigration countries, effectively lowering the overall levels of immigration. While the debates on naturalization and admission continued, a separate though related movement began to encourage English language acquisition among immigrants. Many states, municipalities and private organisations introduced English classes for adult immigrants. Many school systems were also aware of the special language needs of immigrant children. These efforts were largely unorganised, however, and often inadequately funded. Given the large number of non-English speakers, a more concerted effort to teach English appeared warranted. A first step was educating both native-born and immigrant Americans about the benefits to be derived from language programmes. These benefits fit into three main categories: economic benefits, safety benefits and family/community benefits. As far as economic benefits were concerned, an article headed ‘Language as an Asset’ summarised the argument:
Language and Immigration 137 The foreigner lives and moves in a small world, of which he is the center and about which he can freely converse in his native tongue. But English lets him into the larger life of America, raises his wages, calls him to a higher standard of living, and is the medium of better communication with his fellow workers.12 The safety benefits were also lauded. Articles pointed to the high incidence of accidents caused by non-English speaking workers who were unable to read instructions or understand safety regulations. Not only were workers harmed, but also employers suffered economic losses when immigrants unwittingly caused accidents to expensive machinery. Immigrants who did not understand English also posed a threat to public health if they did not understand sanitary regulations. Although safety provisions could be translated, the large number of immigrant groups made it difficult to translate them into every language so it was far better to teach immigrants English. English language acquisition would also help build stronger families. The generational conflicts mentioned above would be reduced if the parents also learned English. The children of immigrants would also be unable to hide their activities from the watchful eyes of parents who spoke and understood English. Some even argued that English instruction would reduce the high crime rates among the second generation who are not fully under their parents’ tutelage. It would certainly allow greater due process for immigrants in the legal system since few courts employed well-trained interpreters. The approach taken by these reformers was significantly at odds with the restrictionists although they often cited the same problems with immigration. Rather than argue for a lessening in immigration, they argued for greater support for immigrant integration. The education reformers found ready allies among settlement house workers, tenement house reformers, public health advocates and progressive labour leaders in mounting campaigns for language programmes. They also formed alliances with business leaders seeking a continuing supply of workers who feared that literacy and other restrictions would be placed on immigration. The reformers differed, however, on whether native language retention posed a threat to English acquisition or an asset to the immigrants and the country. Those who opposed retention generally feared that immigrants would continue to live in unassimilated ethnic enclaves if they clung to their old languages. They saw English as a clear asset and retention of native languages as a threat. At the extreme were those who proposed legislation making English learning compulsory and barring foreign language instruction.13 A more moderate stance was taken by those who were willing to take a more long-range perspective. Believing that acculturation was inevitable and that the second and third generations would become English speakers, they wanted to encourage the first generation to learn English without discouraging them from speaking their first languages. Again, English was the asset but retention was neither asset nor threat. Fewest in numbers were those who supported multilingualism because they saw both
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English and acquisition and native language acquisition as assets. Some reformers, however, believed that a certain amount of linguistic pluralism was inevitable given the large number of immigrants admitted each year. Support for enhanced English language education culminated in the Americanisation movement launched in 1915. Two federal government agencies, acting independently, began assessing the number and efficacy of immigrant education programmes. One of the agencies, the Bureau of Naturalization in the Department of Labor, communicated directly with local school boards, chambers of commerce, and other associations to encourage them to introduce or expand their course offerings. The Bureau of Education in the Department of the Interior held a conference with the National Education Association, which launched a Committee of One Hundred, prominent citizens organised to assist a national campaign for the education of immigrants. Soon other federal agencies, state and local governments and private groups joined what became known as the Americanisation movement. The movement saw assimilation as a matter of public policy, and reached out to the private sector to co-operate with government to ensure that all immigrants had access to language education classes. Faith in education was paramount; only a nationwide commitment to education would give the immigrant access to the American dream. Business proved enthusiastic about the movement. The National Association of Manufacturers encouraged Americanisation programmes among its members. Henry Ford set up classes within his plants and required attendance of his 5,000 non-English speaking employees outside of work hours.14 Chicago had some 155 factory classes and a waiting list of 155 industries ready to start.15 English classes in industry often taught more than the language. They strove to instill the immigrants with their own work ethic. As one lesson plan read: I hear the whistle. I must hurry. I hear the five minute whistle. It is time to go into the shop…16 Industry was joined by organised labour, though, in supporting English language acquisition. The New York Federation of Labor sponsored a proposal in 1918 that would have made participation in English language classes a condition of continued employment.17 New York State did adopt legislation requiring the establishment of night schools throughout the state, and of employer-maintained schools, with attendance required of every employed minor, 16–21, who had not met a fifth grade level of English speaking, reading and writing ability. The legislation also encouraged classes for adults but it did not make these compulsory. Between 1919 and 1921, twenty states passed legislation supporting Americanisation programmes in some fashion. Over time, the Americanisation programme became increasingly coercive in its approach to English acquisition. The state of Iowa even tried to prohibit the
Language and Immigration 139 use of any language other than English in public places. To some extent, the Americanisation movement was taken over by the immigration restrictionists who distrusted the capacity of immigrants to become truly American. Asserting that Americanisation was for the immigrants’ own good, coercion, if necessary, was ultimately beneficial and allowable. Foreignness was seen as a handicap and English was the cure. How the Americanisation movement would have fared if immigration had continued at high levels is unknowable. By 1921, the United States had enacted its first set of national origins quotas. In 1924 a more extensive national origins plan was adopted that effectively restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. The global economic depression of the 1930s, xenophobic reactions in the face of refugee flows from Nazi Germany, followed by the Second World War, further restricted access to the United States. Not until well after the war ended did immigration resume, this time in the admission of Displaced Persons. Not untill the 1960s was legislation passed to eliminate the national origins quotas.
Immigration and Language: The Fourth Wave The Immigration Act of 1965 brought a new, fourth wave of immigration that has continued to the present. Once again, the national and linguistic origins of immigrants have shifted. No longer dominated by Europe, immigration now comes principally from Latin America and Asia. The absolute numbers of immigrants admitted to the country have increased decade by decade, to the same levels as the turn of the last century. Although as a proportion of the population, current levels are smaller, the absolute numbers have once more made immigrant integration an issue of public policy importance. And, once again linguistic differences between immigrants and native-born Americans are an area of significant concern. Parts of this chapter are drawn from a study I prepared in 1980 for the US Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy. The paper was one in a series of historical reviews of issues frequently raised in letters and public testimony submitted to the Commission regarding immigration. English language integration was a recurrent theme in public testimony, and the Commissioners sought to understand the extent to which similar concerns had been raised in earlier periods of immigration. Although concerns were expressed about what some thought to be reluctance on the part of immigrants to learn English, testimony to the Select Commission often focused on what should be the goals of federal policies regarding acculturation of new immigrants. The Commission staff summary of the public testimony harkened back to the earlier debates: While most spokespersons acknowledged the need for federal participation in the acculturation process, there was no agreement among them on the extent of that role, or on the goal of the federal government’s participation. Some felt that the principal goal was to teach English for swift transition to English language competency which would facilitate job training, employability
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The Select Commission made no explicit recommendations on language acquisition for immigrants, leaving what was essentially a laissez-faire system of immigrant integration in place.19 Concerns about English acquisition built through the 1980s. One manifestation was the growth in support for English-as-the-official-language legislation, which has been adopted by more than 25 states.20 The principal organization supporting such efforts, US English, founded in 1983, described the effects of such legislation as: ‘Declaring English the official language means that official government business at all levels must be conducted solely in English. This includes all public documents, records, legislation and regulations, as well as hearings, official ceremonies and public meetings’.21 Interestingly, the organisation justifies its support for such English-only provisions as the best way to help immigrants integrate into the United States: ‘US ENGLISH believes that the passage of English as the official language will help to expand opportunities for immigrants to learn and speak English, the single greatest empowering tool that immigrants must have to succeed’.22 Opponents to English as the official language legislation raise questions about the constitutionality as well as need for such provisions. As the American Civil Liberties Union explains:23 The ACLU opposes ‘English Only’ laws because they can abridge the rights of individuals who are not proficient in English, and because they perpetuate false stereotypes of immigrants and non-English speakers. We believe, further, that such laws are contrary to the spirit of tolerance and diversity embodied in our Constitution. An English Language Amendment to the Constitution would transform that document from being a charter of liberties and individual freedom into a charter of restrictions that limits, rather than protects, individual rights. For the same reasons that earlier generations of immigrants wanted to learn English, today’s newcomers also want to learn the language. Lack of English skills continues to impede economic integration, particularly in gaining access to well-paid jobs with health and other benefits. Knowledge of English and civics remains a prerequisite for naturalisation and full participation in the political process. Lack of English impedes access to health care when patients find it difficult to speak directly with health care providers. Tensions between generations still mount when parents must rely on children to interpret the new society for them.
Language and Immigration 141 Studies of English language acquisition among immigrants tend to show that the major issue facing immigrants is not an unwillingness to learn English but inadequate English language class capacity. The Select Commission’s successor body, the US Commission on Immigration Reform, which was established by the 1990 Immigration Act, found: While adult education enrollment has increased [since the 1991 Adult Literacy Act], the number who do not have access to basic skills programs, especially ESL [English as a Second Language] courses, also has grown. Public and private literacy programs currently serve only 15 percent of the 44 million adults in the US with the lowest level of basic literacy skills.24 Eleven million of the 44 million were immigrants. A number of barriers exist for immigrants who want to enroll in language training programmes. Availability of programmes is an immediate problem. Waiting lists exist in every city with high numbers of Limited English Proficient adults.25 Financial resources are another challenge. Subsidized programmes are hard to find and many immigrants cannot afford to spend large amounts of money on tuition. This is not to say that immigrants are unwilling to invest in English language classes; many programmes with lengthy waiting lists charge tuition. Trained teachers are a further problem. The remarks made by an ESL teacher who was sorry to be leaving the field capture what are the problems: But I won’t miss working many unpaid hours necessary for being the teacher I wanted to be. I won’t miss doing tedious paperwork and driving to locations other than where I teach to do my photocopying and getting my teacher resources. I won’t miss working at night.26 Work conflicts, childcare responsibility and transportation barriers round out the problems faced by immigrants seeking to learn English. Examining these problems, the Commission on Immigration Reform recommended a new ‘Americanization’ programme to help immigrants learn English and otherwise adjust to life in the United States. Recognising that the term ‘Americanisation’ was a controversial one, Barbara Jordan, the Commission’s chair, stated: ‘That word earned a bad reputation when it was stolen by racists and xenophobes in the 1920s. But it is our word, and we are taking it back.’ She defined Americanization as a two-way street: ‘the process by which immigrants become part of our communities and by which our communities and the nation learn from and adapt to their presence’.27 More specifically with regard to English, the Commission held: ‘The nation is strengthened when those who live in it communicate effectively in English, even as many persons retain or acquire the ability to communicate in other languages’.28 Towards that end, the Commission recommended a public–private partnership to educate newcomers in English language skills and core civic values. In emphasising the need for co-operation from the federal, state and local
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governments as well as private institutions, the Commission recognised that the demand for English instruction outpaced the likely resources that any one sector could devote to such courses. The Commission particularly encouraged businesses and corporations to participate in English language training in recognition of the benefits they received from immigration. Although the need for improvements in adult language training has been clear, much greater controversy has surrounded English language education for children. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans discrimination based on the ground of race, colour, or national origin, in ‘any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance’. Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act guaranteed the rights of Limited English Proficient children to receive special assistance from public schools. Passed in 1968, the Act did not specify a specific method of instruction, urging school systems to develop programmes suitable for their districts. In 1974, drawing on the Civil Rights Act, the Supreme Court, in Lau v Nichols, found a San Francisco programme to be inadequate, holding that ‘there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education’. Following the Supreme Court decision, the Congress amended the law to restrict the choices of local school districts. A range of programmes were developed including transitional bilingual education, with early exit to mainstream programmes; maintenance bilingual education, with longer periods of native language instruction; two-way bilingual programmes in which native English speakers learn Spanish (or another language) and native Spanish (or other language) speakers learn English, sharing the same classroom; and intensive English as a Second Language programmes. What was not permissible was the sink or swim programmes that Lau found unconstitutional. Most of the controversy has focused on bilingual education programmes, particularly those that allowed for lengthy transition periods. Many educators support such programmes as the most effective way to teach subject matters along with English to LEP students. Others oppose it, arguing that bilingual problems retard English acquisition by focusing on native language instruction. This argument certainly prevailed among California voters who supported Proposition 227, which required public schools to teach LEP students ‘overwhelmingly in English’ through sheltered/structured English immersion (SEI) programmes during a transition period and then be transferred to mainstream English-language classrooms. A five-year evaluation of the effects of the new programmes is still underway. After a thorough review of the literature on the effectiveness of different pedagogical models of instruction, the Commission on Immigration Reform concluded: ‘there is no strong evidence that one models works better than another or that one type of instruction is preferable’. Programmes work as well as they are able to depending on resources, teacher availability and training and other factors. The Commission found that involvement of parents in the education
Language and Immigration 143 of their children was one of the most important factors in explaining the effectiveness of language instruction models. Many programmes are not designed, however, to allow for the active participation of non-English speaking parents in making decisions about their children’s education. The Commission also emphasised the need for regular evaluations of students’ English competence and their ability to apply it to academic subjects. Studies of English language acquisition among immigrants and their children tend to confirm the strong pull of the language. In one of the most comprehensive reports on the impact of immigration on the United States, the National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences concluded: ‘over time and with extended exposure to the new language, immigrants who have arrived without English skills tend to acquire them’. The report further found:29 with rare exceptions, native-born persons have competence in English. Many children of immigrants have skills in two languages – English and the language of their parents’ country of origin. And although some children of immigrants face special challenges in school because of the bilingual nature of their environment, English language proficiency is almost universal. In fact, loss of native languages among second-generation children of immigrants (as well as the one and a half generation of immigrants who came to the US at a young age) continues to be more common than failure to learn English. The children of today’s immigrants may be losing native languages more quickly than their predecessors. According to the ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education, ‘there is a trend towards monolingual English speaking among the children of immigrants. Previously it took three generations for a family to lose its native tongue’.30 As in earlier periods of immigration, rapid acquisition of English can be a source of tensions between English-speaking children and their native-speaking parents. As a study of Vietnamese families found:31 Cultural conflicts between immigrant parents and children born or reared in the United States are common. In the case of the Vietnamese, differing life experiences of the children growing up in the US and their immigrant parents can turn the generational gap into a chasm. Young people want to be accepted by their American friends, not their foreign-born peers, and they internalize public and peer messages that the important things in life are personal prestige, instant gratification, and conspicuous consumption. Children often see their parents as holding tightly to ‘old world’ norms. Parents see their children as overly attracted to the least constructive sides of American culture. This process is referred to as segmented assimilation, in which the children of immigrants adopt the lifestyles and cultural norms of segments of the US population that may not themselves be part of the American mainstream.
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At its worst, the process of acculturation may leave the children of immigrants with low levels of literacy in both the native language and English. During fieldwork in Miami, for example, the author heard complaints from companies doing business in Latin America that the children of Spanish speaking immigrants were barely able to communicate in Spanish and their level of literacy in English left much to be desired. These business leaders advocated true bilingual education that would teach students to be fully literate in both languages.32
Conclusion Throughout its history, the United States has found the English language to be a unifying force that has helped the country to absorb millions of immigrants. The nation itself was founded on principles of civic unity amid religious and cultural diversity that necessitated a common language that would enable all citizens to participate in the new republic. English was the common language of the American colonies and remained the common language of the new republic. The only real challenge to English has been in the form of immigration. Unlike countries that became multilingual because of conquest or federation of distinctly different language groups, the United States is multilingual largely because of the arrival of newcomers from distant lands. As this review of the history of language in the United States, fears have recurred throughout American history that newcomers would threaten the American experiment if they failed to learn English. Even during periods of growth and optimism, critics of immigration have criticised immigrants for not learning English quickly enough. While some of these critics may have been xenophobic and racist, the concern about English acquisition and native language retention went far deeper. Commonality in language has consistently been seen as the source of unity in an otherwise highly diverse population. Any threat to language cohesion has therefore been seen as a threat to the very nature of the American republic. For the most part, the concerns of these critics have been overstated. The forces of acculturation have remained strong throughout American history. While it may take time for the first generation adult immigrants to become fluent in English, their children quickly learn the new language. English is seen equally by immigrants and natives to be an asset that leads to economic and social mobility as well as naturalisation and civic participation. In fact, if there is any problem with language, it is the loss of native language retention in the second generation, not the failure of immigrants to learn English. In a manner of speaking, Franklin was right in the quote with which this chapter began. The German immigrants in colonial America did not ‘Anglify’, but, of course, the English natives did not Germanise. Instead, both became Americans, as have millions of immigrants who followed them to people the new country. Learning American English has been an important part of that process.
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Notes 1 Parts of this chapter are drawn from a report prepared by the author (Susan Forbes [Martin] and Peter Lemos, A History of American Language Policy, U.S. Immigration Policy and the National Interest, Appendix A of the Staff Report of the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, 1982). 2 Quoted in Robert A. Feer, ‘Official Use of the German Language in Pennsylvania’, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, October 1952, p. 402. 3 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, Chapter 1, p. 1. 4 Noah Webster, Dissertation on the English Language, Boston, 1789, p. 20. 5 Feer, op. cit., p. 394. 6 Ironically, a number of eighteenth century scholars studied the tribal languages in hopes of finding elements that were similar to European languages in order to prove the common origins of mankind. Nevertheless, when faced with observable difference among races, ambivalence as to human equality vied with deeply held feelings about racial inferiority. See, for example, the writings of Thomas Jefferson. 7 Quoted in Forbes [Martin] and Lemos, op. cit., p. 63. 8 Ibid., p. 71. 9 Ida Hull, (1924) ‘Special Problems in Italian Families’, quoted in Stanley Feldstein and Lawrence Costello (eds), The Ordeal of Assimilation, New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 1974, p. 365. 10 Joshua Fishman, Language Loyalty in the United States, The Hague: Mouton, 1966). 11 Congressional Record, 59th Congress, 1st Session, v. XL 1906, p. 7773–7774. 12 ‘Language as an Asset’, The Survey, 22, 14 August 1909, p. 677–679. 13 Sarah Barrows, ‘Foreign Child and his Speech Handicap’, Educational Review, 64, Dec. 1922, p. 367–376. 14 Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85, National Archives File E226, letter from Hon. A. J. Tuttle, US District Judge Detroit to Chief Examiner, Bureau of Naturalization, Chicago, Aug. 14, 1915. 15 Caroline Whipple, ‘Americanization in Industry’, University of State of New York, Bulletin, Albany, September 1919. 16 Herbert Gutman, Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America, New York: Vintage Books, 1977, p. 6. 17 Whipple, op. cit., p. 15. 18 US Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, Appendix H to the Staff Report: Public Information Supplement, pp. 304–305, available for reference at the National Archives. 19 The exception is the resettlement of refugees. The federal government supports grants to private voluntary agencies and to state governments to provide language training and other services to newly arrived refugees. 20 According to US English, which advocates for such legislation, the following States had English as an Official Language provisions: Alabama (1990), Alaska (1998), Arkansas (1987), California (1986), Colorado (1988), Florida (1988), Georgia (1986 and 1996), Hawaii (1978), Illinois (1969), Indiana (1984), Iowa (2002), Kentucky (1984), Louisiana (1811), Massachusetts (1975), Mississippi (1987), Missouri (1998), Montana (1995), Nebraska (1920), New Hampshire (1995), North Carolina (1987), North Dakota (1987), South Carolina (1987), South Dakota (1995), Tennessee (1984), Utah (2000), Virginia (1981 and 1996), and Wyoming (1996). Arizona’s 1988 provision was overturned by the Arizona State Supreme Court in April, 1998. Such legislation does not necessarily preclude providing information to immigrants in their own language. 21 US English, Inc. website (http://www.us-english.org/inc/official/about/). 22 Ibid.
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23 ACLU, ‘English Only’, found at: http://archive.aclu.org/library/pbp6.html. 24 US Commission on Immigration Reform, ‘Americanization and Integration of Immigrants’, Appendix to Becoming an American: Immigration and Immigrant Policy, December 1997, p. 235, available in the National Archives. 25 Ibid., p. 264. 26 Ibid., p. 232. 27 Ibid. 28 US Commission on Immigration Reform, Becoming an American: Immigration and Immigrant Policy, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1997. 29 James P. Smith and Barry Edmonston (eds), The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration, Washington, DC: National Academies of Sciences, 1997. 30 Wendy Schwartz, Immigrants and Their Educational Attainment: Some Facts and Findings, Number 116, November 1996, EDO-UD-96–4, ISSN 0889–8049. 31 Min Zhou, University of California, Los Angeles, and Carl L. Bankston III, Tulane University, The Biculturation of the Vietnamese Student, Eric Clearinghouse on Urban Education, Digest, Number 152, March 2000. 32 Education appears to be the key to greater economic success for the individual, not bilingualism itself. Fry and Lowell found that bilingual skills ‘do not make a statistically significant contribution to weekly wages, once all workers’ human capital characteristics are held constant. Thus, the market little values foreign language proficiency and creates no incentive to acquire or maintain it, doubtless contributing to the relatively rapid shift to monolingualism across generations’. Richard Fry and B. Lindsay Lowell, ‘The Value of Bilingualism in the US Labor Market’, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, vol. 57, no. 1, October 2003.
9
Global, National and Local Identities The Transformative Effects of Migrant Literature1 Maggie Ann Bowers
Since the 1980s, migrant writers in the English-speaking world such as Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje and Hanif Kureishi have been key players in the creation of an innovative contemporary literature. Migrant literature has become a highly popular field of study and migrant writers are keenly sought by both publishing houses and the reading public. Migration influences the language in which literature is written, the characters that populate it, the subjects it considers and in particular the idea of what constitutes a national literature.
The purpose of this chapter, to consider the positive and negative effects of migration upon literature, approaches literary study from an unusual angle. It necessitates a consideration of the strong influence of migrant literature upon contemporary national literary canons, and by extension upon national languages and cultures. For this purpose the work of Salman Rushdie and his consideration of the role of migrant literature in transforming the cultural landscape of the world will be at the fore. However, unusually for literary study, it also necessitates a surveyor’s unbiased detachment rather than the more usual politically charged interpretations of the literary critic. The analysis will consider three aspects: firstly, the effects of immigration on the literature of a country with a long literary history such as England, which entails the re-evaluation instigated by new cultural influences on ‘Englishness’ and language variations of ‘Englishes’; secondly, by the effects of immigration on the literature of a country with a developing cross-cultural literary tradition such as Canada with its ongoing multicultural debate; and thirdly, the effects of departing migration on a country such as India with a long history of literary production and a strong notion of a national literature. The chapter will consider the inevitable resulting internationalism of all of these literatures and the ensuing need to reconsider national cultural identity. In literary terms the discussion focuses on the resulting revision of the ‘literary canons’ and their processes of ‘canon formation’. For the purposes of this chapter the analysis will focus on the effects of immigration from the Indian subcontinent, both in literature by migrants and of their second generation children (bearing in mind that they are as much affected by the fact of their parent’s migration as they are a part of the process of a country’s adjustment to new immigration).
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Migration and Literary Studies The attempt to write about the possibility of migration as an asset or threat to literature necessitates a different way of thinking about literature from the usual textual critical approach. It equally necessitates a different way of thinking about what might constitute a positive or negative effect on literature since it is not for the most part something that the outside world acts upon overtly and obviously, rather literature is witness to the outside world and incorporates and expresses within itself the changes that it witnesses. Where it does influence the world, it does so covertly and indirectly through its influence on the reader. Moreover, it is not an impartial witness. The writer and the critic, or the fictional voices that they create (who might all be considered to constitute what is called literature) pass judgement, commentary and interpret the real world, on issues such as migration and the positive and negative effects that it has on people’s lives. Being such a witness to change leaves its mark on literature and reflects the cultural context in which it is received.
Migrant Literature in Britain In Britain, migrants from South Asia have created a strong and increasingly influential presence since the 1950s, whereas in Canada the steadily increasing South Asian population is just beginning to gain recognition as one of the larger and more influential groups. Despite the long presence of Asian people in Britain, it has been the post-war migrants from the Indian subcontinent who have begun to make their mark on the canon of English literature2 (and far more so than on the canons of Wales and Scotland). The most important writer in this field is the British/Indian writer Salman Rushdie who considers the reasons behind the high profile of South Asian migrant writing in Britain in his essay Imaginary Homelands.3 He concludes that it is the intensified sense of loss of another life and of the past that provides the migrant writer with the impetus for their current success; ‘the writer who is out-of-country and even out-of-language may experience this loss in an intensified form. … This may enable him to speak properly and concretely on a subject of universal and significant appeal’.4 In her history of South Asian fiction in Britain, Susheila Nasta agrees that it is the need to ‘write home’ resulting from migration that has spurred these writers on: ‘For diaspora does not only create an unrequited desire for a lost homeland but also a “homing desire”, a desire to reinvent and rewrite home as much as a desire to come to terms with an exile from it’.5 Arriving initially with the immigrants from the Caribbean of the 1950s, the Indo-Caribbean writer Sam Selvon was a pioneer in migrant writing in Britain. His novel The Lonely Londoners (1956), following the lives of a group of Caribbean immigrants in 1950s London known as the ‘Windrush generation’ after the name of the boat on which they first arrived, is a novel that ‘writes home’ both by considering the loss of the homeland whilst creating a place for the immigrants in their new English home.6 In later decades in England the growing influence of contemporary migrant writers and second generation writers such as Hanif Kureishi and Meera Syal has been noted for its move away from the issue of
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exile and towards the complications of being ‘in-between’ cultures and its ensuing generation gaps. For our purposes it is essential to consider the writing of Salman Rushdie who has made the issues resulting from migration both to Britain and from India the focus of much of his fiction. In his novel The Satanic Verses he famously asks the question ‘How does newness come into the world? (…) Of what fusions, translations, conjoining is it made?’7 His rhetorical line of questioning provides the hint of an answer – newness results from the transposition of peoples and cultures that is migration. In his collection of essays Imaginary Homelands Rushdie proposes further revealing thoughts on migration; for him, migration is a form of translation – related to language, to writing and most strongly to culture. Many critics have taken up Rushdie’s question and have elaborated on the effects, both positive and negative, of such cross-cultural ‘newness’. The renowned Indian critic Homi Bhabha (now based in the United States after many years in England) in particular wrote a critical essay analysing The Satanic Verses: ‘How newness comes into the world’ in which he considers the manner in which migration produces personal and cultural changes.8 Bhabha expands Rushdie’s thoughts on the relationship of the migrant to translation and the position of being in-between cultures – neither having arrived and assimilated in one, nor having entirely left and rejected the other. This position, Bhabha explains, and Rushdie illustrates, leads to personal instability and insecurity and the need to define a new space. As Bhabha states:9 This liminality of migrant experience is no less a transitional phenomenon than a translational one; there is no resolution to it because the two conditions are ambivalently enjoined in the ‘survival’ of migrant life … caught in-between a ‘nativist’, even nationalist, atavism and a postcolonial metropolitan assimilation, the subject of cultural difference becomes a problem that Walter Benjamin has described as the irresolution, or liminality, of ‘translation’, the element of resistance in the process of transformation, ‘that element in a translation that does not lend itself to translation’. Living with this liminality as a migrant calls for a new way of thinking and demands that language adapts in order to provide a means to express this inbetween condition in migrant literature. It is this that Rushdie had to overcome in order to write The Satanic Verses and that all migrant writers must face. Bhabha explains that:10 For the migrant’s survival depends, as Rushdie puts it, on discovering ‘how newness enters the world’. The focus is on making the linkages through the unstable elements of literature and life – the dangerous tryst with the ‘untranslatable’ – rather than arriving at ready-made names. In his novel The Satanic Verses, which is set for the most part in London, he explores the effects of migration upon the migrants themselves, the city they arrive in and the language of its people. At the opening of the novel the two
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principal characters from ‘Bollywood’, Gibreel and Saladin, fall from an exploding aeroplane above the south coast of England and the novel follows their progress to and in London. Although both of them are ordinary men in Bombay, the fall from the aeroplane has effected a magical transformation on them. Gibreel appears to become saintly whereas Saladin develops into his devilish opposite. Whilst this obviously is connected to the suggestively religious title of the novel, it also provides Rushdie with a chance to explore the darker side of being an immigrant. Found without papers, Saladin is no longer the British citizen he had previously become but represents the negative racist idea of an immigrant. He is devilish and an animal; he has horns and his lower half is transformed into that of a goat. Brutalised by the police, he is made to eat his own excrement, is knocked unconscious and is hospitalised in a weird institution where all the inmates have taken on the actual attributes of the negative stereotypes with which they are perceived – e.g. into snakes, monkeys and water buffalo. As one half-man-half-tiger explains: ‘They describe us, … That’s all. They have the power of description, and we succumb to the pictures they construct’.11 By writing such passages in English Literature, Rushdie begins to undo such stereotyping by drawing attention to the methods by which it is used and to allow the migrants to speak for themselves. As for the city itself, Rushdie is explicit about the transformative effects of migration upon London. One of his characters is an imprisoned protester and community leader who is quoted as having proclaimed:12 we are here to change things. I concede at once that we shall ourselves be changed; African, Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Cypriot, Chinese, we are other than what we would have been if we had not crossed the oceans, if our mothers and fathers had not crossed the skies in search of work and dignity and a better life for their children. We have been made again: but I say that we shall also be the ones to remake this society, to shape it from the bottom to the top. Susheila Nasta notes that this transformation of society is an inescapable consequence of migration in a post-colonial England, changed forever by its loss of Empire:13 For in a post-imperial nation that, by the end of the twentieth century was fast losing its grip on any sense of a coherent national identity, the presence of these others within exposed the underside … of the faltering myth of Empire and its waning fantasy of an invented ‘Englishness’.
Migrant Literature and Language Even the English language itself is transformed in its own land by the intonations and vocabularies of the many Englishes from post-colonial nations, brought to
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England by the migrants as their own means of expression. Although Rushdie writes in recognisable grammatical English, his writing includes many passages where the characters’ own intonations influence the text – be they cockney, rap musicians or the conversational tones of Anglophone Indians. For instance, the narrator takes on the tones of a typical resident of Bombay to provide background information about Gibreel: ‘Ji, he must be sick, he has always been famous for his punctual, no, why to criticize, maharaj, great artists must from time to time be permitted their temperament, na …’14 Changes to the language which a nation uses to communicate amongst its population and with which it expresses its identity go to the heart of what constitutes a culture. A nation’s literature and the language in which it is written are intimately related. New forms of language use are made acceptable by their employment in a novel that is recognised as an important literary work, and equally such a novel bears witness to the prevalent use of a form of language that has become recognisable and acceptable in common parlance. Thus migrant literature that uses new or different forms of English reflects the influence of the cultural diversity of migration upon the English language. Language use in the novels by second-generation immigrant writers such as Kureishi and Syal is more assimilatory. Their writing adopts the local dialects and fashionable phrases to provide a strong sense of place and time. Kureishi’s novels, set mostly in suburban London, are famous for providing a strong sense of the era in which they are set, such as the glam-rock era of The Buddha of Suburbia,15 which he carries out through references to popular culture and its particular vocabulary. Syal on the other hand produces a strong sense of the setting of her novel Anita and Me16 in the English Midlands by using dialect for her characters’ speech. It is no coincidence that both these writers have had their novels adapted to film and television (The Buddha of Suburbia – 1993, Anita and Me – 2002).17 They are among the best writers that Britain is producing and the popularity of their work reveals that the subject matter of immigrant families sells. We can only conjecture whether their popularity is a result of the number of the reading public who are migrants, the awareness of the reading public of the importance of contemporary migration, or simply the result of the fashion for the multicultural.
Migration and the English Literary Canon However, we must ask what this means for English literature. It does suggest that migration has invigorated English literature by providing the ‘newness’ of cultural fusions, styles of expression and the ready-made topic of migrant experience. But what of the ethnically English indigenous writer (if such a person exists) – are they less fashionable, are they less likely to be published due to the profit-driven publishing houses, are there by coincidence simply not as many as good? There are those who feel protective towards ‘Englishness’, towards the idea of an Anglo-Saxon indigenous population, towards dictionary-correct English language, who would argue that migration threatens the cultural foundations of
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England. But whilst contemporary immigration may threaten such people’s sense of national identity, migrant writing has long been a tradition of English Literature. After all, it is impossible to consider English Literature without acknowledging the influential part of the Polish born Joseph Conrad or American born Henry James, both of whose work considered the movement of peoples through different cultural contexts. Whichever stance one veers towards, it is clear that international recognition of England’s current literary talent is the positive result of migration. But this kind of statement provides problems for those seeking to create a canon of English literature. If these writers are indeed migrant and thus international and cross-cultural, they are difficult to categorise as strictly ‘English’. This is particularly the case for Salman Rushdie who in fact is thought of as a ‘cosmopolitan’ moving between Bombay, London and New York rather than an ‘Englishman’. His writing in fact complicates canon formation to the point where it disintegrates, the edges between literary canons blurring into one another. It is the multicultural, cross-cultural and transcultural aspects of migration that is the focus of literature’s act of witnessing the world and it is the language in which it is written that is changed by the influences of these cultural fusions. As Susheila Nasta notes, ‘… Britain’s postcolonial subjects during the period following the Second World War have consistently drawn the attention of cultural critics to the liberatory, transgressive and shape-shifting elements of being “unhoused”’.18
Migrant Literature in Canada The role of the migrant in the literature of Canada has played an even more crucial role than that of England. Although there is an unresolved question about how many generations must pass before a writer ceases to be a ‘migrant’ writer, it can be argued that Canadian Literature is almost entirely migrant literature with the exception of works by the indigenous First Nations people of Canada. The peculiar situation of migrant Canadian Literature is that it is uniquely connected to politics and the notion of multiculturalism as a result of the Federal Government’s policy to fund migrant literature.19 With the introduction of the Multicultural Act in 1971, the State funded literature projects and writers to encourage a flourishing Canadian culture. This was in effect in reaction to the postcolonial circumstance of the country. The time had come, it was felt, for Canada to produce its own culture, influenced by indigenous sources without relying on influence from Europe. There is no better illustration than in Margaret Laurence’s novel The Diviners (1975) in which she revises her reliance upon her Scottish ancestral roots in favour of creating a new set of myths and roots associated with her hometown on the Canadian Prairie.20 However, the early form of the Multiculturalism Act emphasised the two primary language groups of the French and the English and the multiculturalism resulting from the combined influences of the French and the British. In 1988, with the realisation
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that new immigration from areas of the world such as South and South East Asia was changing the constituency of the Canadian population, the Multicultural Act was revised with the introduction of Bill C-93, which recognised migrant groups other than those from the European founding nations. The idea of migrant literature has thus come to refer to those writings by first or second-generation migrants from countries other than those of Western Europe. In other words, migrant literature in Canada has taken on a radicalised and politicised meaning. This again has had an influence over who would receive arts funding for ‘multicultural’ Canadian writing. Now, although funding is scarcer, many first novels by first or second-generation migrant writers from South Asia acknowledge funding from the Department of Cultural Heritage or Canada Council. Many of the most notable contemporary writers in Canada also have South Asian ancestry: Michael Ondaatje, Neil Bissoondath, Vikram Seth and Shani Mootoo to name a few. In fact, the work of Michael Ondaatje and that of Neil Bissoondath both considers the role of the migrant and the continual reassessment of the uneven and ever-changing ‘mosaic’ of cultural aspects from which a Canadian national culture is constructed. Their opposing views offer an interesting insight into the different attitudes towards migrant literature that writers from migrant backgrounds can take. Bissoondath takes an anti-multiculturalist stance, rejecting the notion of migrant literature in favour of an assimilationist, modernist position. In contrast to Rushdie, Kureishi, Syal and Ondaatje, he states:21 Within three generations … the language of my great-grandparents had all but disappeared, and along with it had gone a way of life: dependence on the land, religious belief. We felt no sense of loss, no tincture of regret, no romantic attachment to a language that no longer served our circumstances. For Bissoondath, his family has progressed from subsistence agriculture to whitecollar professions due to immigration. Their and his use of standard Canadian English is a deliberate act and, as he sees it, facilitator for their modern progress. As he explains:22 Both families are now replete with doctors and lawyers, teachers and writers. All this has come, in great part, through a refusal to brood over the loss of one language and its cultural baggage and a willingness to embrace another. English, then, is not for us a borrowed language but an acquired one, as fully part of my family today as Hindi was a hundred years ago. Ondaatje on the other hand explodes multiculturalism into a series of international influences where cultures blend into one another with the continuous movement and accidental meetings of peoples across the globe. His novels In the Skin of a Lion (1987), Running in the Family (1983) and The English Patient (1993) all deal with migration and cross-cultural influence.23 Running in the Family is based upon his own mixed Sri Lankan, Dutch and British ancestry in their pre-immigration
154 Cultural and Identity Security home of colonial Ceylon. His novel The English Patient deals explicitly with the idea of nomadism and cultural ties in war-torn Europe and North Africa. In the Skin of a Lion, moreover, considers specifically the lives of migrant families and their influence on the city of Toronto. Taking a similar stance to Rushdie – indeed, Ondaatje is often associated with the same ‘cosmopolitanism’ as Rushdie – he celebrates the resulting cultural fusions, but also like Rushdie reveals the unacknowledged role of culturally marginalised groups who create the diverse culture of a city. The character Nicholas Temelcoff, having literally constructed parts of Toronto, is acutely aware that his contribution will go ignored due to his status as an immigrant. His response to such a situation is to turn to literature and ‘begin to tell stories’.24
India’s Reaction to South Asian Diasporic Literatures Due to their cross-cultural and international stance both Rushdie and Ondaatje sit within and between several canons of national literature. Rushdie was born in India, Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka and yet their writing is often claimed by England and by Canada respectively. It almost appears that migrant writing allows the cultural richness of countries such as those in the Indian subcontinent to be plundered for the Western world’s literary heritage. Debate following the awarding of the Booker Prize for Commonwealth Literature to the Indian writer Arundhati Roy in 1997 for The God of Small Things (1997) introduced such questions into wider critical commentary.25 Even before the book was published it was surrounded in controversy due to the enormous financial advance that she received from a British publishing house. Roy is Indian, lives in India and wrote about her home State, Kerala, in the novel. However, her international literary success, the similarities in the writing to Salman Rushdie (and in particular the use of the international literary device of magical realism) and the overseas payment brought about fear in India that yet another of their talented writers would be tempted overseas and swallowed by another nation’s canon. The list of Indian writers who have been incorporated into other nation’s canons is long and includes international bestsellers such as Vikram Seth (Canada), Amitav Ghosh (the United States) and Anita Desai (the United States). Instead, Roy defended her position as a Keralan writer and turned her attention to active politics. The Arundhati Roy debacle may have ended with a victory for India but the position of English writing in India continues to be vulnerable. India has a strong and longstanding tradition of writing in English but it constitutes only a small part of its literary canon gathered together from its fifty-plus language groups. The vulnerability of writing in English is that it is immediately accessible to an international and rich audience and is therefore afforded more importance outside India than it is within India. As the critic Rukmini Bhaya Nair has said ‘Indian reviewers react negatively because it is apparent to us that much of the current writing by Indians in English is very consciously moulded to cater to the global market’.26 These writers are seen to address only such issues that fit with
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the West’s preconceptions of India – such as suttee, arranged marriages, and the exotic. As such, it appears to be permanently facing away from India with its attention drawn to this larger and richer reading public.
Migrant Literatures and National Literary Canons But what of national literary canons? Do they have any further relevance in the world of the global village? The irony is that with the changes brought about to national cultures through the process of ongoing migration, nations desire to redefine themselves and they do so, in part, by revising their national literary canons. The canons reveal which books represent who they see themselves to be and who they wish themselves to be. Britain and Canada both see themselves and wish to be seen as countries invigorated by South Asian immigration. The contributions of South Asian authors to their respective countries’ literary canons are highly valued. However, literature is primarily reflective and constitutes a commentary on society rather than acting upon society and initiating change. Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, his commentary upon his novel and those of critics such as Homi Bhabha have opened-up debate in Britain and India concerning the migration that links the two countries. Such literature can have a transformative effect upon its readership and through them upon society. In fact, the initiation of this debate in society by these works is in itself transformative. However, so much depends upon the prior convictions of the reader and their receptivity. It is possible to read any work of literature and to remain unmoved and unchallenged. Thus, despite the positive tone of Rushdie’s suggestion that newness enters the world through the changes brought about by migration, a positive or negative reaction to migrant literature and the changes that it brings to literary canons and national culture is equally possible. Now, however, the critics, the publishing houses, the universities and the general reading public are embracing migrant writing and rising to its challenges.
Notes 1 The author gratefully acknowledges support of the Special Research Fund of the University of Antwerp (Antwerp, Belgium, 2000). 2 ‘English Literature’ in this case refers to literature produced in England or by writers from England and includes migrant literature written by nationals or residents of England but excludes other literatures written in English. 3 Salman Rushdie, ‘Imaginary Homelands’, in: S. Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism (1981–1991), London: Granta, 1991, p. 9–21. 4 Ibid., p. 12 5 Susheila Nasta, Home Truths: Fictions About the South Asian Diaspora in Britain, Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, p. 7. 6 Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners, London: Allan Wingate, 1956. 7 Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, Dover, Delaware: The Consortium, 1992, p. 8. 8 Homi Bhabha, ‘How Newness Enters the World: Postmodern Space, Postcolonial Times and the Trials of Cultural Translation’, in: H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994. 9 Ibid., p. 224.
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Ibid., p. 227. Rushdie, Verses, op. cit., p. 168. Ibid., p. 414. Nasta, op. cit., p. 3. Rushdie, Verses, op. cit., p. 12. Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia, London: Faber and Faber, 1990. Meera Syal, Anita and Me, London: Flamingo/HarperCollins, 1997. Metin Huseyin, Anita and Me, Icon Films, UK 2002, and Roger Michell, The Buddha of Suburbia, London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1993. Nasta, op.cit., p. 3. See Lynette Hunter’s study Outsider Notes: Feminist Approaches to Nation State Ideology, Writer/readers and Publishing, Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1996. Margaret Laurence, The Diviners, Toronto and London: Bantam, 1975. Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1994, p. 79. Ibid., p. 81. Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family, London: Gollanz, 1983; Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion, London: Saker and Warburg, 1987, and Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient, London: Picador, 1993. Ondaatje, Lion, ibid., p. 149. Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, London: Flamingo, 1997. Quoted in Debashish Mukerji, ‘And Never the Twain Have Met’, The Week, 16 April 2000, online available: http://www.the-week.com/20apr16/life1.htm (accessed 20 December 2002), p. 3.
Part III
Personal and Economic Security
10 Immigration and the Welfare State Andrew Geddes
Introduction The relationship between immigration and welfare has ascended the political agenda across Europe. Are immigrants a drain on resources and a threat to the survival of the welfare state or are immigrants likely to make a vital contribution to the survival of these welfare states? Underpinning these questions has been a realignment of debates about needs and resources in European countries with renewed interest in immigration as a means of offsetting skills and labour market shortages while countering effects of population change. The European Union (EU) has got into the act too. The European Commission made the case that immigration would be necessary if Europe was to attain its objective of becoming the world’s leading knowledge based economy (CEC, 2000, 2003). This chapter’s argument is that there has been a neo-national realignment of migration and welfare that focuses the debate about needs, resources and values on the continued sustainability of national welfare states. Debates about needs and resources have become focused on labour market needs and welfare state pressures understood to a considerable extent in national terms (although many of the pressures are, of course, international) and a debate about immigrant integration that has seen a reassertion of ‘national models’ to which immigrant newcomers should adapt. This neo-national reassertion has occurred because of the recognition that continued immigration into European countries is necessary to sustain employment, economic growth and international competitiveness. But this does not mean openness towards all forms of immigration. Openness to skilled labour migration has been accompanied by a stricter demarcation between those forms of migration seen as contributing to the national welfare state and those that are construed as a threat to it, such as asylum-seeking. International migration is both a dependent and an independent variable of welfare, which raises two questions: what impact does welfare have on migration flows and what effects do migration flows have on welfare? These tend to be the thorny questions at the heart of political debate about migration and welfare, although neither is easily resolvable. The reason for this being that the answer to the question depends upon the type of migration and the form of welfare state. A huge mistake when analysing the impact of migration and welfare would be to discuss ‘immigration’ as though it was an homogeneous phenomenon and
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‘welfare states’ as though they came in only one type. The ways in which debates about needs and resources have been recast in Europe has created new opening for ‘positive’ labour migration policies (particularly directed at the highly skilled), but there have been vigorous attempts at closure directed at those forms of migration defined as unwelcome, particularly asylum. In fact, the relation to welfare has been central to both. Leaving aside the obviously arbitrary process of categorisation that takes no real account of the skills and abilities of individuals: skilled labour migrants are seen (by governments at least, although the public and media may not always share this enthusiasm as the British government discovered when supposedly lax immigration policies became a major source of controversy and a cause of ministerial resignation in April 2004) as an asset and asylum seekers as a threat. This chapter explores relations between immigration and welfare in a broad European perspective. It looks at various forms of international migration, diverse types of welfare state organisation and assesses the impact of European economic and political integration. The intention is to demonstrate that prevailing and bombastic constructions of the relations between immigration and welfare in public debates in terms of either ‘destroying’ or ‘rescuing’ the welfare state are simplistic because they ignore the subtleties and nuances that are central to relationship between migration in its many and various forms and the different types of welfare state evident in European countries, as well as the developing effects of European integration.
The Politics of Migration and Welfare Two ostensibly contradictory views inform European migration policies. These expose core migration policy dilemmas concerning the balance between openness and closure negotiated by states at their borders (even in this era of European integration, this assertion of the sovereign right to exclude at the border remains one for European states, for now at least). The distinctions made by receiving states between ‘wanted’ and ‘unwanted’ migration constitute a core battle line in debates about migration policy and to notions of immigrants as assets or threats. While arguments about needs and resources have been recast, there seems some disjunction in debates about values. Rather than a diminution in the neo-national semantics of immigrant integration, there seems to have been a reassertion through programmes that stress the importance of ‘national models’. Even the ‘multicultural’ responses of Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK have been watered down to place more emphasis on learning the language and socio-economic adaptation. To portray the issues in an overly stark way can be misleading, however. Links between migration, welfare states, social policy, social rights and models of social integration are more subtle and nuanced than caricatured representations in public debate of ‘immigration’ with an unfortunate tendency towards homogenisation and categorical confusion. Migration does, of course, come in many forms with different relations to various forms of welfare state organisation and associated ideas and practices relating to social rights.
Immigration and the Welfare State 161 It is, though, worth exploring the opposing battle lines in the debate to get some sense of how the discussion has unfolded. The first of these is that while some immigration is necessary, desirable and inevitable, it is also the case that welfare states serve as a powerful pull factor enticing new ‘unwanted’ immigrants and that this can be a threat to welfare state resources and to welfare state solidarity – why should ‘we’ provide for ‘them’? It has been argued that extensive welfare states such as those in Scandinavia will tend towards closure towards immigrant newcomers (Bommes and Halfmann, 1998). This does seem to be borne out by recent developments in Denmark and Sweden. Immigrants can thus be seen to challenge the organisational (who is entitled) and conceptual (who belongs) basis of welfare states. Empirically, the argument that migrants constitute a threat to welfare states has some weaknesses. Research tends to suggest that while there are winners and losers in both sending and receiving states as a result of international migration, the overall effects of immigration in socio-economic terms are broadly positive (CEC, 2003). Research for the UK Home Office suggests a positive net fiscal effect (Gott and Johnston, 2002). A reformulation of this point about the costs of immigration centres on the ways in which migration by culturally distinct migrants erodes the bonds of solidarity that are the basis of the welfare state. Goodhart (2004) identifies a ‘progressive dilemma’: why should ‘we’ provide for those ‘others’ that are not like us. Immigration needs to be strictly regulated otherwise these bonds of solidarity can be ruined, with grave implications for the future of these welfare states. This echoes a point made by Leca (1992) who argued that increased presence of foreigners can lead to a decline in welfare state solidarity and restrictions on welfare scope. Wieviorka (1992) called this a differential racism in the sense that the limits of acceptance of immigrant newcomers are challenged when newcomers begin to assert themselves and make claims for rights. Perhaps too a concern is that powerful integrating welfare states institutions at national level no longer function in the way that they used to and that integration has been replaced by social exclusion and alienation. If this is the case, it would be difficult to argue that it is immigration that has driven fundamental realignments of the relationship between states and markets in such a way that the integrative capacity of welfare institutions has been eroded and, perhaps, will never be recaptured. Perhaps here the flow of causality goes from the welfare state to immigrants in the sense that more general pressures on welfare state shave affected understandings of immigration and increased pressure to delineate more tightly the community of legitimate receivers of welfare state benefits (Bommes and Geddes, 2000). The second view about the effects of immigration on European welfare states is directly opposed to the viewpoints just outlined. It draws from claims that immigration can have a positive economic and social effect because demographic changes with ageing populations in EU member states combined with labour market shortages require new, ‘positive’ labour migration policies if European welfare states and social models are to be maintained (Spencer, 2003). New positive migration policies are thus needed for European states competing
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in a global market for skilled, migrant workers. From this perspective, immigration is a potential asset that can make a positive contribution and help sustain valued European social models. The weakness of this argument is that labour migrants are not a ‘magic bullet’ capable of resolving Europe’s labour market and welfare state problems. Migrants will themselves generate welfare state needs as they have families and get old. Moreover, it’s important not to get too fixated on all the problems of these poor old European countries. Migration can have negative effects on sending states that lose skilled and talented individuals, although this can be compensated for by remittances and return. However, if European countries do project a continued need for migrant labour then this needs also to be placed in the context of international welfare and the relationship between migration and development (Nyberg-Sorensen et al., 2002; CEC, 2002a). Migration will be part of the solution, but is not the solution. The fact that interpretations of immigration as an asset or as a threat co-exist in public debate illustrates the complexity of the issues and the Janus-headed European approach to migration balancing openness and closure. Indeed, national governments can flit betwixt and between the two positions: arguing the case for closure while seeking to leave the door ajar for skilled migrants.
Types of Migration and Forms of Welfare State Encounters between international migration and the various forms of welfare state across Europe will depend to a significant extent on the type of migration and the form of welfare state. To generalise is to neglect these distinctions and the complex interplay between migration types and welfare state organisational forms. Migration scholars are, of course, very well aware that the terms ‘immigration’ and ‘immigrant’ are very broad and can actually be unhelpful when exploring the many and various forms of population mobility that involve the crossing of state borders and the relations between this mobility and welfare states, social rights and ideas and practices concerning social integration. For instance, the motives for migration and the duration of stay can all vary. The assumption that migration is a one-way process of leaving one state and moving to another where the migrants become permanently settled is far from being the sum of the migration experience. Migration may be short- or long-term. It may be contract-based or involve mobility within an organisation, such as a multinational company. All these different situations lead to very different relationships with welfare states. Migrants may move to work, to study, for family reasons or to seek asylum, but these broad motives can be broken down. Labour migration, for instance, may be skilled or unskilled, it may be short- or longterm, and it may be regular or irregular. Moreover, ‘one form of migration may be capable of metamorphosing into something else through a set of processes, which are increasingly institutionally driven. What we then choose to define as migration is an arbitrary decision and may be time specific’ (Dobson et al.,
Immigration and the Welfare State 163 2001: 25). This is not to immediately collapse this chapter’s analysis into terminological inexactitude, but to acknowledge the importance of distinguishing between types of migration and to link these to institutional processes that give meaning to migrations as ‘wanted’ or ‘unwanted’ (from the point of view of receiving states). Similar kinds of issues concerning distinctions been made between welfare states also arise. Esping-Andersen (1990) distinguished between liberal, conservative and social democratic welfare state types and devised the classic schema of European welfare states. The effects of international migration were not considered when this representation was developed, but distinctions between these welfare state types (as well as pressures on them and changes in them) are, of course, central to analysis of immigration and welfare. Esping-Andersen identified liberal, conservative and social democratic models, to which has been added a Southern European model (Ferrera, 1996) that is relevant because of the higher levels of immigration experienced by these countries since the late 1980s (although Gough (2001) questions whether Spain is now more of a ‘conservative’ type than other Southern European countries, and perhaps Italy too). Liberal welfare states, such as those in the UK, emphasise the centrality of the individual and the primacy of the market either subsidised or actively encouraged by the state. The result tends to be a minority of low-income dependents (amongst whom immigrants and their descendants are over-represented) and a majority with more capacity to provide for themselves. Since the 1990s, for instance, under both Conservative and Labour governments the ethic of individual responsibility has been increasingly emphasised in such a way that renewed emphasis is placed on the responsibilities of individuals. This applies to all members of the welfare state community, but debates can be at their most intense when the social rights of migrant newcomers, such as economic migrants and asylum seekers are the subject of debate. The conservative-corporatist welfare state type such as in Germany has been seen to exhibit the historical legacies of corporatism and a system of income maintenance linked to occupational status. Migrant ‘guestworkers’ made a vital contribution to the post-war reconstruction of the Federal Republic of Germany’s welfare state. Moreover, despite exclusionary nationality laws, migrants secured access to the German welfare state because of the contributions they made. More recently, this German welfare model has faced a challenge from intra-EU migration by ‘posted workers’ from EU member states where wages and social costs are lower who move to Germany and undercut German workers. This was seen to undermine the system of ‘consensus capitalism’ (Hunger, 2000). In this instance, the ‘challenge’ to the German welfare state emanated from migration from EU member states with lower levels of social protection and lower wages. The ‘posted worker’ debate in Germany also demonstrated the ‘incompleteness’ of European integration in the sense that free movement has been extensively supranationalised while welfare states remain national (as too do fiscal systems). This is not to suggest that the EU is locked into a process whereby
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this incompleteness will eventually be eroded and the end result will be some form of EU welfare state. Given the diverse forms of welfare state evident in the EU, this is an unlikely outcome. Incompleteness seems likely to persist and be a distinct feature of European economic and political integration in a ‘multilevel’ EU where powers are shared at sub-national, national and supranational levels. The social democratic welfare state typically ascribed to Scandinavia has been challenged by European integration and, more generally, by economic internationalisation. The costs of unwanted forms of immigration such as asylum-seeking to the Danish welfare state were a key factor in the electoral success of the rightwing Danish People’s Party. The social, democratic welfare state was seen to rest on the principles of universal and redistributive benefits leading to ‘an essentially universal solidarity in favour of the welfare state’. Developments in Denmark show how welfare state exclusion has been used to close the door to new ‘unwanted’ immigrants (for similar developments in Sweden, see Hammar, 1999). A south European welfare state type was not included within EspingAndersen’s schema, but has been seen as a distinct form of provision that combines occupationalism via a maintenance system with universalism (e.g. in health care provision) in combinations that are not seen elsewhere in Europe. Welfare state coverage tends to be lower in Southern European countries. Moreover, the informal economy is more prevalent in Southern Europe and provides a space for the economic insertion of irregular immigrants who, although they will use some welfare state services, are formally located outside of the community of legitimate receivers of welfare state benefits (Reyneri, 2001). It has also been suggested that state-society relations can differ in Southern Europe with different expectations about the role of the state to both regulate access to the state territory and pursue social inclusion. Baganha (2000), for instance, has argued that expectations about state capacity to include and exclude are lower and that state avoidance by citizens (as marked by larger informal economies) can be more prevalent in Southern Europe.
Welfare State Belonging In the terms described above, welfare states amount to more than simply the sum total of social policies. The relationship between immigration and welfare is about more than the rules governing entitlement because it also touches upon debates about the basis for entitlement, membership of a welfare state community, as well as ideas and practices concerning the social integration of citizens and newcomers. From this perspective, welfare states embody in powerful institutional form a community of legitimate receivers of welfare state benefits (Bommes and Geddes, 2000). Decisions about entitlement, the basis for entitlement, who is deserving of welfare state support and who is not then become key boundary concerns for the welfare state community. Whether immigrant newcomers will be allowed membership of this community is a key policy issue with evidence across Europe of welfare state exclusion for ‘bogus’ or ‘abusive’ immigrants.
Immigration and the Welfare State 165 These welfare state communities are not national communities because nonnationals have secured access to them too. Post-war migration flows into Western Europe saw non-national migrants access legal and social rights short of full citizenship (becoming ‘denizens’) because they lacked political rights (Guiraudon, 2000). Access to the welfare states was based on the contribution made by labour migrants rather than nationality. The exclusion of contributing non-nationals would have undermined the organisational basis of these welfare states. For instance, as immigration to the social democratic Swedish welfare state increased during the 1960s there were strong welfare state arguments to ensure full and immediate welfare state membership for immigrant newcomers in order to ensure that the universalist and egalitarian foundations of the welfare state were not undermined (Geddes, 2003: ch. 5). Despite the misplaced assumption of temporariness that accompanied post-war labour migration, it became apparent that the ‘guests’ had come to stay with the effect that labour migrants and their family members settled in European societies and formed ‘ethnic minority’ communities. Settlement led to increased engagement with the welfare state with increased numbers of women, children and older people amongst the migrant origin population. Will the encounter between new waves of migration since the 1990s such as asylum-seeking and irregular migration and European welfare states follow a similar trajectory with forms of welfare state inclusion and social integration based on denizenship and/or citizenship? The answer seems to be that it will not, or at least that appears to be the intention of European government. Yet, as we know, states have also found it difficult to attain their migration policy objectives (often because they are not clearly formulated or can be inconsistent, see Castles, 2004). Efforts have been made to close the door to asylum seekers, but the price of this can be the fuelling of people smuggling and human trafficking networks with increased irregular employment that then presents another type of challenge to the welfare state. One ‘solution’ begets another ‘problem’. To summarise, while it is possible when looking at the policies of European states to distinguish between those forms of migration deemed economically beneficial (such as high skilled labour migration) other migrations such as those by asylum seekers are portrayed as a drain on welfare state resources. Welfare states play a key role in delineating a community of legitimate receivers of welfare state benefits. This is not a national community but there has been a neo-national reassertion of the conditions of membership. The definition of this community of legitimate receivers of welfare state benefits centres on the ways in which the conceptual (who belongs, who is entitled, etc.) and organisational (what is the basis for entitlement and how is entitlement to be administered?) basis of national welfare states is defined and can be redefined. There is an underlying point about method here too. Immigration is not something that simply ‘happens to’ European welfare states as though it were an exogenous shock beyond their control. Rather, the ways in which international migration in its various forms is understood as advantageous or damaging is less a consequence of the individual character or personality of migrants (that they as people are in
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some way ‘bogus’, ‘abusive’ or on the other hand ‘deserving’) than it is a consequence of decision-making processes within organisations trying to make sense of international migration in its various forms. Following from this, the discussion of immigration and welfare is nested in a set of more general discussions concerning the future of European welfare states and social models. Lurking here is the issue of ‘integration’, which as Banton (2001) notes is in some sense an unsatisfactory concept because of the allusion to the building of a whole number and the obvious questions that are raised, notably ‘from what’, ‘into what’ and ‘by whom’ is this process to be effected. Yet, despite these problems, integration remains a key point of reference for policymakers and, in addition to this, there has even been a neo-national ‘return to integration’ and move away from multiculturalism in European policies. Yet, this question of ‘integration’ is not one that applies solely to immigrant newcomers. It clearly is an issue for all members of society. The costs of failure measured as social exclusion are high. If we see it this way then we can connect the discussion of immigration and welfare to more general debates about these welfare states and social models and to background institutional conditions derived from more wide-ranging welfare state changes. The result is that discussion of the social rights of newcomers and expectations about their ‘integration’ (and the capacity of European states to affect such processes) will be related to a more general set of welfare state concerns. Put another way, ideas and practices concerning the social integration of newcomers will derive from more general debates about social integration (or the perceived absence of it) that affect all citizens. If ideas about social integration change, as a result of changed welfare state ideologies and greater social individualisation, for instance, then it seems reasonable also to expect that expectations for immigrant newcomers will change also. This provides a dynamic setting for the discussion of immigration, welfare, social rights and ideas about social integration. Immigration does not drive these general debates, in fact the line of causality may well run the other way, but it does provide a fascinating lens through which we can observe their effects.
Analysing the Migration/Welfare Nexus The previous section has sought to outline some of the key aspects of the debate about migration and welfare that need to be central to analysis of the key issues and their policy implications. This section takes the point about a neo-national reassertion of welfare state membership forward by analysing examples of the migration/welfare nexus. The renewed opening to ‘positive’ labour migration policies in many European countries has led European states such as the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands to enter a global competition for skilled migrant workers. Policies have been particularly geared to certain sectors of the economy where perceived shortages are most acute. There are three arguments for such policies. First, demographic changes require new migration, although demographic arguments can be rather simplistic and neglect other routes to more flexible labour
Immigration and the Welfare State 167 markets and higher rates of labour market participation (such as increased female participation). Second, there can be distinct labour market shortages and bottlenecks. These can be remedied by training of the local population, but this is a medium to long-term remedy while labour market needs can be more pressing. Third, migration is beneficial in the sense that it brings bright, entrepreneurial people into an economy and society and replenishes the available stock of talent (with other people that choose to emigrate as a countervailing factor). All these motives for positive policies would be assumed to bring benefits for the welfare state both in terms of sustaining provision and generating new wealth for the economy. The category ‘labour migration’ is itself broad. It can be broken down into further subsections such as motive for movement, duration, skill level and contractual basis. There are strong gender effects with female migrants moving into sectors such as domestic employment while male migrants gravitate towards sectors such as construction. There has also been a strong female presence in migration to Europe of health care workers. There can be need in European countries for health care specialists to fill labour market gaps caused by domestic worker shortages and growing demands for health care because of an ageing population. The focus on skilled migration is not the whole story, even though state policies tend to concentrate on this form of migration and tend not to open the door to unskilled migration. Yet, it soon becomes apparent that across Europe there are large numbers of migrant workers in unskilled occupations sometimes with an irregular status and employed in the informal economy. Economic informality – income earning activities that are not regulated by the state in situations where similar activities are regulated (Castells and Portes, 1989) – is particularly prevalent in Southern Europe, but in northwest European countries too, sectors such as construction are prone to economic informality. Despite the closing of the official door via restrictive labour migration policies to lower skilled forms of labour migration, there is a continued demand for such forms of labour migration. One reason for this is that migrants in addition to filling gaps at the higher end of the labour market will do the lower status jobs that European domestic workers seem less unwilling to do. An underlying reason for much of these debates about positive migration policies and labour market reform is the basic fact that Europeans tend not to move. As the EU becomes more and more economically and politically integrated, EU citizens seem to display a diminished propensity to exercise their supranational rights to free movement (CEC, 2002b). Economic informality, dual labour markets and low levels of intra-EU mobility underpin a continued demand for unskilled migration. Two welfarerelated implications can be identified. First economic informality and irregular migration create welfare state problems because irregular migrants are outside of the formally defined community of welfare state members. They will not contribute through direct taxation to the welfare state, although they will contribute through indirect taxes. The most common route to repair this incomplete status
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has been regularisation (for example 704,000 people were regularised in Italy in their 2003 programme). The second point relates to the effects of European integration. Although levels of intra-EU mobility by EU citizens are low, there are specific instances of intra-EU migration that have had very real welfare state effects. The most notable of these is the case of the ‘posted workers’. These posted workers exercise EU provisions covering free movement for service providers to send workers from one EU member state to another to undertake work (particularly in the construction sector) but with the wages and social contribution of these workers being determined in their country of origin rather than the country in which they actually do the work. This meant that workers from the UK, Portugal and Ireland could move to Germany during that country’s construction boom while not being subject to the conditions and regulations of the German construction sector. One result was the instigation in Germany about the damaging effects of this form of ‘social dumping’ on the German model of consensus capitalism. This form of migration was seen as competing with rather than complementing the domestic workforce and as corrosive of welfare state arrangements, and equally importantly, the social model associated with them. This form of intraEU migration illustrates the persistence of divergent social models (in this case a clash between liberal, Southern European and conservative welfare state models induced by EU free movement provisions). This does not mean that the EU is locked into a trajectory whereby these divergences are eliminated as the EU becomes progressively more integrated. In fact, the extensive supranationalisation of free movement (the establishment of a binding European legal framework) has not been accompanied by similar welfare or social policy measures. The EU’s rather limited social dimension has been mainly concerned with ensuring the portability of entitlement for those EU citizens that do exercise their rights of free movement rather than seeking to harmonise welfare state arrangements (Eichenhofer, 1997). Given the diversity of these arrangements and levels of provision in the (from January 2004) 25 member states, it seems very unlikely – to put it mildly – that a European welfare state will emerge any time soon.
The Response to Asylum The discussion can now be developed further by considering the relation between welfare states and asylum-seeking migration. The growth in asylumseeking migration across the EU in the 1990s (although numbers of applicants fell across Europe in the first years of the new century to levels that were roughly half what they had been in the early 1990s when more than 800,000 asylum seekers entered EU member states in 1992) led to the view that (i) welfare states were a pull factor and (ii) that welfare state related deterrents could be used to control this form of ‘unwanted’ migration and to ensure that it could be reversible. The first assumption has been shown to be flawed in the sense that most asylum seekers do not come because they have conducted detailed analyses
Immigration and the Welfare State 169 of comparative European welfare state systems. Rather, it seems that more usual explanations such as political-historical ties between sending and receiving countries and the development of migrant networks continue to be highly relevant (Zetter et al., 2003). Despite this evidence, the ‘defence’ of welfare has become a component of asylum policy. When analysing asylum, welfare and social rights in the Netherlands, Germany and France, Bank (2000) discovered the opposite of welfare state policies with efforts to strictly delimit the welfare state access of asylum seekers. The aim has thus been to deny asylum seekers the chance to become members of the community of legitimate receivers of welfare state benefits through measures such as denying access to the labour market, replacing cash paid welfare state benefits with vouchers, dispersing asylum applicants around the country, and housing asylum applicants in special accommodation centres. Taken together these measures seek to ensure that this form of migration, unlike other earlier forms of post-war migration, such as labour and family migration, is reversible. An irony of this approach is that the denial of access to the labour market leads to welfare state dependency and sustains the arguments about ‘abuse’ mobilised by those seeking ever-tougher measures against asylum seekers. The anti-immigration lobby is quite malleable in its arguments, however. If asylum seekers were allowed to work then this would doubtlessly be portrayed as a threat to jobs and labour market standards. The point that I have been trying to make is that specific arguments about migration and welfare need to be related to the more general background institutional setting. The ideas and practices that animate the relationship between migration and welfare can work out very differently according to which type of migrant is being discussed. There has, however, been an assertion of a neonational approach to migration centred on a re-evaluation of needs and resources and a reassertion of a national approach to the integration of immigrant newcomers. The background setting is important lest we should run away with the idea that immigration has somehow driven changes in European welfare states. Immigration in terms of it size (although perceptions of its size are far in excess of its actual extent, which is highly relevant to perceptions of the issues) is at the margins of debate. This is not meant to imply that immigration is irrelevant and we need not worry about it. It is meant to suggest that ‘immigration’ is an object onto which is refracted more general concerns about the future of European welfare states and integration within them, which we now move on to discuss.
Integration Within and By European Welfare States An underlying problem with the notion of ‘integration’ is that we only tend to recognise it in its absence as social exclusion or disintegration. Yet the ‘integration’ of immigrant newcomers has been reasserted as a policy reference across the EU since the late 1990s. The neo-national reassertion of integration tells us something about immigration to these countries, but equally if not more importantly,
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also tells us something about the ways that welfare states and ideas about social rights and integration have been changing. The more general background institutional conditions provide the context within which debates about immigration and welfare are nested. Immigration is at the margins of this debate, but is a point at which the discussion can become particularly intense precisely because the organisational and conceptual boundaries of these welfare states are clearly exposed. Sweden (in the 1970s) and the Netherlands (in the 1980s) both adopted multicultural policies that recognised group rights for immigrants and pursued identity-affirming policies. In both countries there was a shift away from these policies because the perception was that they were failing immigrant groups who remained economically and socially distant from Swedish and Dutch societies with higher levels of social exclusion. In the Netherlands, for instance, the multicultural approach was seen to identify certain immigrant-origin groups as social problems that were then to be targeted by special measures to improve their social inclusion. In both Sweden and the Netherlands, official policies have moved away from multiculturalism and emphasised instead socio-economic integration, workplace training and the learning of the Dutch or Swedish language. The Dutch policy encouraged newcomers to ‘seize opportunities’ and ‘take responsibility for making use of the many facilities that [the Netherlands] offers to its new compatriots’ (Dutch immigration minister Roger van Boxtel cited in Geddes, 2003: 116). In 1996 Sweden designated a minister with specific responsibility for immigrant integration with more emphasis on self-sufficiency and self-reliance. The UK government’s 2002 legislation on immigration, nationality and citizenship followed a similar path. Immigrant newcomers would encounter an increased emphasis on socio-economic integration and learning the national languages. These views also informed the measures introduced by the German government in its first ever immigration and immigrant integration legislation. People who may lack the ties of language, culture and history that previous flows of post-colonial or guestworker migrants possessed could construe these kinds of shifts as a response to new forms of immigration. There is some truth in this in the sense that the countries of origin of migrants to Europe have broadened and diversified; but this is at best a partial explanation. To understand these changes in integration policies also requires that the background institutional conditions provided by more general welfare state pressures and changes are considered. There have been a series of welfare state and labour market changes in all the countries referred to above that place more pressure on individual members of the welfare state community to assume responsibility for provision and to be more self-reliant. When translated to the discussion of immigrant newcomers it becomes apparent that the response to new migrations since the 1990s has a strong welfare state component that has less to do with the culture and identity of immigrant newcomers than it has with the effects of economic change, welfare state reforms, changed welfare state ideologies, diminished trust in politicians and the state to deliver social inclusion.
Immigration and the Welfare State 171 Without claiming that this signals the death knell for European welfare states, which remain powerfully entrenched in European states and have strong adaptive capabilities, there have been a series of changes that affect all members of the community of legitimate receivers of welfare state benefits, which have then translated in adaptive pressures on immigrant newcomers. It is in such terms, that broader debates about the social integration of immigrant newcomers – and the meaning given to this term – make sense.
Conclusions It has been argued that debates about needs and resources have been recast in such a way that new forms of immigration to European countries are seen as necessary. Debates about values have, however, experienced a neo-national reassertion of a national approach to the integration of immigrant newcomers. This has occurred within welfare state communities that are not national because non-nationals can access them too, but within which there has been an attempt to reassert the ‘national’ basis of membership. This general perspective plays out in different ways because of the many and diverse types of international migration and the various forms of welfare state that are often powerfully entrenched in European societies. These welfare states provide a powerful repertoire of institutions and ideas mediating the inclusion and integration of immigrant newcomers (and the meaning given to such notions). European states have pursued a Janus-headed approach to migration policy that combines general attempts at closure with limited openness that also possesses a strong underlying welfare state component influencing perceptions of migration as an asset or threat. Underlying cost-benefit analyses of immigration’s effects are a series of arguments that pertain to notions of belonging and the ties of solidarity that bind welfare state members. The organisation of these welfare states and debates about their future provides a vital background setting. The links between migration, social entitlements, social rights and the definition of a community of legitimate receivers of welfare state benefits are linked to institutional settings. These have far less to do with the cultures and identities of immigrant newcomers than with ideas about the capacity of European welfare states to achieve integration for newcomers and for all their members. If this is in doubt then we should expect more pressure to include those immigrant newcomers that are seen to make a contribution such as high skilled migrants and to exclude those that don’t, such as asylum seekers. Categorisations drawn by receiving states are central to the analysis of immigration and welfare. Whether an individual migrant is wanted or unwanted, valued or not, seen as an asset or a threat, is less to do with their individual character or personality, or even the skills that they possess, than it is to do with the category into which they are placed. A strong welfare state rationale underlies these categorisations and that is why the relationship between immigration and welfare has been, is and will remain a key social and political issue.
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References Baganha, M. (2000) ‘Immigrants Social Citizenship and Labour Market Dynamics in Portugal’, in M. Bommes and A. Geddes (eds) Immigration and Welfare: Challenging the Borders of the Welfare State, London: Routledge. Bank, R. (2000) ‘Europeanising the Reception of Asylum Seekers: The Opposite of Welfare State Politics’, in M. Bommes and A. Geddes (eds) Immigration and Welfare: Challenging the Borders of the Welfare State, London: Routledge. Banton, M. (2001) ‘National Integration in France and Britain’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27(1). Bommes, M. and A. Geddes (eds) (2000) Immigration and Welfare: Challenging the Borders of the Welfare State, London: Routledge. — and J. Halfmann (1998) Migration in nationalen Wohlfahrtstaaten: Theoretische und vegleichende Untersuchungen, Osnabrück: Universitätsverlag Rasch. Castells, M. and Portes, A. (1989) ‘The World Underneath: the Origin, Effects and Dynamics of the Informal Economy’, in M. Castells, A. Portes and L. Benton (eds) The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Economies, Baltimore (MD): Johns Hopkins University Press. Castles S. (2004) ‘Why Migration Policies Fail’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 27(2), 205–227. Commission of the European Communities (CEC) (2003), Communication on Immigration, Integration and Employment, Com 336 final. ——(2000), Communication from the Commission to the Council and European Parliament on a Community Immigration Policy, COM (2000) 757 final. —— (2002a), Communication from the Commission to the Council and European Parliament on Integrating Migration Issues into Relations with Third Countries, COM (2002) 703 final. —— (2002b) Communication from the Commission to the Council, European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, Commission’s Action Plan for Skills and Mobility, COM (2002) 72 final. Dobson J., Koser, K., McLaughlin, G. and Salt, J. (2001) International Migration and the United Kingdom: Recent Patterns and Trends, Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Section: London. Eichenhofer, E. (1997) Social Security of Migrants in the European Union of Tomorrow, Osnabrück: Universistätsverslag. Esping-Andersen, G. (1990) The Three World’s of Welfare Capitalism, Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press. Ferrera, M. (1996) ‘The “Southern Model” of Welfare in Social Europe’, Journal of European Social Policy, 6 (1), 17–37. Geddes, A. (2003) The Politics of Migration and Immigration in Europe, London: Sage. Goodhart, D. (2004) ‘Horns of the Liberal Dilemma’, The Observer, February 8. Gough, I. (2001): ‘Social Assistance Regimes: A Cluster Analysis’, Journal of European Social Policy, 11 (2), 165–170. Gott, C. and Johnston, K. (2002) The Migrant Population in the UK: Fiscal Effects, Home Office RDS Occasional Papers Number 77. Guiraudon, V. (2000) ‘The Marshallian Triptych Reordered: The Roles of Courts and Bureaucracies in Furthering Migrants’ Rights’, in M. Bommes and A. Geddes (2000) Immigration and Welfare: Challenging the Borders of the Welfare State, London: Routledge. Hammar T. (1999) ‘Closing the Door to the Swedish Welfare State’, in G. Brochmann and T. Hamar, Mechanisms of Immigration Control: A Comparative Analysis of European Regulatory Policies, Oxford: Berg.
Immigration and the Welfare State 173 Hunger, U. (2000) ‘Temporary Transnational Labour Migration in an Integrating Europe and the Challenge to the German Welfare State’, in M. Bommes and A. Geddes (eds) Immigration and the Welfare: Challenging the Borders of the Welfare State, London: Routledge. Leca, J. (1992), ‘Nationalité et citoyenetté dans l’Europe des immigration’, in J. CostaLascoux and P. Weil (eds) Logiques d’État et immigrations, Paris: L’Harmattan. Nyberg Sorensen, N., Hear, N. van and Engberg-Pedersen, P. (2002) The Migration Development Nexus: Evidence and Policy Options, Geneva: International Organization for Migration, 2002. Reyneri, E. (2001) Migrants’ Involvement in Irregular Employment in the Mediterranean Countries of the European Union, Geneva: International Labour Organisation Working Papers. Spencer, S. (ed.) (2003) ‘The Politics of Migration’, Political Quarterly, special issue, December 2003. Wieviorka, M. (1992) La France Raciste, Paris: Fayard. Zetter, R., Griffiths, D., Ferretti, S. and Pearl, M. (2003) An Assessment of the Impact of Asylum Policies in Europe: 1990–2000, London: Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate, Social and Economic Research Publications Series, Research Study 259.
11 Migration: A Threat or an Asset to Health? Peter Poore
This chapter will explore the real and imagined threats of disease transmission as a result of migration.1 It will also consider the health benefits and assets for migrants, their families who stay behind, and their hosts. It will conclude that much more can be done to manage both the real and managed threats to health and to optimise the benefits. The history of the world is written in the movement of people, inspired by the lure of exploration, the search for a better life, the need to survive, the desire to gain new experience, religious and political conviction, adventure, profit, love and conquest. Migration is the driving force behind economic and cultural development.2 Today, it is possible to traverse the world in days if not hours. The speed of travel and the frequency of movement of people around the world have increased dramatically in the last 50 years. The reasons why people move have also multiplied and inevitably the potential for disease transmission has grown. Whatever the real or imaginary threats to health, the interaction of people is fundamentally ‘healthy’ in terms of increasing our mutual understanding, tolerance and knowledge of the richness of cultural diversity, interdependence and potential for development. Segregation and exclusion, on the other hand, whether by race, colour, creed, language or any other criteria may be fundamentally ‘unhealthy’ in that it diminishes us all, and ultimately limits the potential of the human race. However, the risk of disease transmission exists whenever people move from one place to another. Immigrants, refugees and those seeking asylum in the rich countries of the world represent a relatively small, but significant proportion of those people who move. Tourists, traders, business people, friends and relatives and others make up a large proportion of international travellers. All can transmit diseases. All can be a threat to health and all can bring health benefits to themselves, to their hosts and to the families they leave behind. The globalisation of trade encourages the free movement of goods and money in order to benefit all. These benefits have reached a large proportion of the people of the world. However, a large minority remain excluded from any benefit: ‘44 countries do not have the resources to provide basic services’ (World Bank, 1997). As a result, and in a world of unprecedented wealth, the gap between rich and poor is growing, both between and within all countries of the world. (Fifty-four countries saw average income decline during the 1990s and 21
Migration: A Threat or an Asset to Health? 175 countries went backwards in terms of human development) (United Nations, 2002). It is this inequitable distribution of wealth that, to some extent drives the urge to migrate. It also defines the pattern of disease in different parts of the world. For example, in environments with poor sanitation, unsafe water supplies, food shortages and inadequate health care, infectious and communicable diseases predominate. In the wealthier parts of the world, where infections have, for the most part, been brought under control, the degenerative, psychological, genetic and other diseases predominate. This inequitable burden of disease and unfair distribution of resources and opportunities is inevitably a cause of frustration, conflict and war. Clearly, the possibility of moving to a more favourable environment in order to survive economically and to avoid illness and disability from communicable diseases is a powerful incentive to migrate. For those in fear of their lives as a result of war or persecution, migration becomes an imperative if they are to survive at all. The ‘free’ movement of people should be a natural accompaniment to the process of globalisation and ‘the free movement of goods and money’. However, a fear of people we don’t know or understand is common. And much of this fear centres on the belief that ‘foreigners’ bring unknown diseases. It can be diverse, rational or irrational, and fear itself may manifest itself as disease with the potential for harm, injury and ill health. To the extent that free movement of people might be restricted because of a fear of disease transmission, an understanding of the real and imagined threats is essential if these are to be limited and/or managed effectively, any assets optimised, and a rational immigration policy developed.
What is Health? What Influences Health? Without a definition of ‘health’ it is difficult to assess the extent of the risk of ‘illhealth’. But health is a subjective concept that varies from culture to culture and between individuals.3 The World Health Organisation defines health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’ (WHO, 1978). Health is determined by the interaction between people and their environment. At the same time, health risks vary with age, gender, genetics, social status and wealth. Health is also influenced by anything that imposes limits on the choices available to people. These may include, for example, cultural behaviour, poverty, persecution and conflict. Safe water, sufficient food, sanitation, shelter, health care, education and security are prerequisites for optimal health. Where any one of these is missing or inadequate, health will be compromised. Local environments can be influenced by climate, natural disaster or war. They can also be affected, both positively and negatively by the globalisation of trade and the accompanying rules and regulations that can and do penalise the weak in favour of the strong. Decisions, whether political, economic or strategic, made in rich countries, but affecting all nations, can have both a negative and a positive impact on the health of people, especially in poorer nations.
176 Personal and Economic Security For the migrant or traveller from one place to another, the environment will constantly change. The reason for the migration will impose particular characteristics on this changing environment. For example, refugees or asylum seekers who move against their will, are bound to face many hazards both physical and psychological. Tourists or business people will have much more control over their changing environment and will face far fewer health hazards, unless of course they take part in dangerous pursuits like mountaineering or indiscriminate sexual activity. As has been said earlier, health threats will be related to a number of variables including the prevailing disease patterns in the country of origin and the host country; the immune status of individuals and communities concerned; the state of health (including the emotional state) of both visitor, and host population; the state of health care services in the host country and in the country of origin; social and economic circumstances (the stress of migration may itself cause disease); the reasons behind the migration; its likely duration and the capacity and willingness of the visitor/host to communicate with the host/visitor population, including the health services. It will be apparent therefore that any attempt to generalise about health threats and assets amongst people who move from one environment to another must take into account all of these diverse variables, including the migrant’s own individuality and uniqueness.
What is Communicable Disease?4 Communicable or infectious disease is the most feared of all diseases because it is clear that anything that increases the contact between people can increase the risk of infection. However, without an understanding of how diseases are communicated, these fears can be exaggerated and become distorted. Communicable disease refers to a group of diseases that can be transmitted from one person to another. Infectious disease agents, including viruses, bacteria and parasites have always been a major threat to health, development and security. Today they account for more than 40 per cent of the diseases of the world. HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria are amongst the leading causes of death in the world today. Transmission of organisms takes place in several different ways. The measles virus, for example, is transmitted directly through the air in droplets from the respiratory tract of an infected person. It is highly infectious, and will spread rapidly through a susceptible community.5 The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), together with other sexually transmitted diseases, is transmitted directly by transmission of bodily fluids either through sexual intercourse, blood or blood product transfusion, the use of needles contaminated with infected blood or from mother to child during pregnancy, childbirth or breast-feeding. Some of these infecting organisms are more infectious than others, but in the case of HIV an infected person may be infectious to others for life.6 Many communicable diseases require a vector of some kind to effect transmission. Malaria is an example as it can only be transmitted from an infected person to another susceptible person by first passing through certain female mosquitoes. It is therefore not
Migration: A Threat or an Asset to Health? 177 possible to get malaria from someone with the disease, unless the relevant mosquito is also present. It is clear that an understanding of the modes of transmission of communicable diseases together with knowledge of the natural history of the infectious agent is the first requirement for any analysis of risks and the assessment of methods of control. Good surveillance systems for the early identification of disease are essential to be able to take appropriate and timely action and to be able to counter rumour or unreasonable fear. With today’s speed of travel, it is possible to move across the world within the period of incubation and infectivity of most infectious diseases.
A Delicate Balance Understanding the delicate balance that exists between humans and the organisms with which they share an environment and how that balance can be disturbed can put the assessment of risks into a proper context. Many things can disturb this balance and the pattern of disease transmission can be changed, both for good or bad. For example, travel and migration increases the contact between people, and in the last 50 years, the pace, frequency and extent of travel within and between countries has increased considerably. This will have an impact on future epidemics of infectious disease.7 The balance can also be disturbed by the ability of many micro-organisms to mutate and to produce strains that are more virulent and more resistant to treatment.8 The Tuberculosis bacillus is an example of an organism that has become resistant to many of the drugs used in treatment. At the same time, major advances in the prevention and treatment of disease, especially in the prevention of infection, have also changed the balance, and have to date enabled us to respond effectively to infectious disease with new vaccines and improved care. Changes in the environment and in land use can increase the conditions that favour the spread of disease. Among many examples of this, one is that global warming will increase the number and geographical extent of breeding sites for mosquitoes that carry the malarial parasite. Changes in animal husbandry have been implicated in the spread of diseases that also infect humans. For example the use of cattle feed prepared from the carcasses of ruminants has been implicated in the recent outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (BSE) in cattle and its human form, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). The implications of increasing trade and disease transmission are little understood today, but these risks pose real threats and are at least as important as the risk posed by the movement of people.9
Who is Susceptible to Communicable Disease and Why? We are all, at one time or another, susceptible to diseases. Susceptibility depends upon many things that influence the capacity of the human body to withstand infection and disease – its immunity.
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Immunity may be acquired – and lost – in a number of ways. First of all, some immunity against some diseases is passed from mother to child during pregnancy and through breast milk. Immunity may also develop following naturally acquired infection. This may last only for a short time or it may be life long. Vaccines can also induce immunity, which may also be short lived or life long. At the same time, immunity can be altered or lost during a life as a result of many influences, such as other infections, malnutrition, or stress. HIV is an example of an infectious agent that acts by attacking the immune system itself. As a result the individual is made vulnerable to other infectious agents, such as Tuberculosis. Malaria offers a good example of how disease can confer some immunity, though it may not be complete and it may be easily lost. Immunity is acquired through constant transmission of the malaria parasite in those living in endemic areas of the world – assuming they survive the process of recurrent infection in childhood! On the other hand, those living where the disease does not occur are particularly vulnerable to infection if they travel to endemic areas. People who have developed immunity over many years can lose this immunity if they leave the endemic area and travel to places where the parasite does not exist. If they leave for more than a few months, (for example, students on courses of 6 months or more) they lose this natural acquired immunity and become vulnerable to the disease again. For this reason also, migrants who leave endemic countries and then return at a later date, (for example, to visit friends and relatives), are at risk of developing severe infection. Observer, 6 June, 2002) and ‘Killer diseases on the loose around the globe’ (The Guardian, 11 January, 2002) exacerbate the fear of infections from abroad. Nevertheless, infectious diseases recognise no international boundaries, so that a newly emergent disease in one part of the world must be assessed as a potential threat to other countries. It must be remembered that since the early 1970s at least 30 new or previously unrecognised infectious diseases have become prominent, for which there is, as yet no fully effective treatment. Given the nature of the micro-organisms that cause infection, the pattern of human behaviour and changes to the environment, further newly emergent infectious diseases are inevitable. It is essential to expect the unexpected. Although these risks are real, they can be managed and minimised through a better understanding of the root causes. It is not necessary to prohibit or restrict migration in order to manage the risk, other than in exceptional circumstances.
Risks to Health Arising from the Movement of People The key threats to health for all travellers are; (i) the threat of infectious and communicable disease being brought from one country to another by foreign visitors and infecting the host population; (ii) the threat of visitors being infected or affected by the host population; (iii) the increased burden on existing health services of disease amongst visitors and infected host populations as a result of both of the above; (iv) the increased economic burden of disease on host countries.
Migration: A Threat or an Asset to Health? 179 For refugees and asylum seekers, additional threats include; (v) isolation, depression and psychological disturbances; (v) deepening poverty and the diseases associated with it, including malnutrition; (vi) racism and fear of racial abuse. From an epidemiological perspective, any health threats will be related to the prevailing disease patterns in the country of origin and the host country. They will also be related to the immune status of individuals, to the state of health of both visitor (including their emotional state), and host populations, to the state of health care services in the host country and in the country of origin, to their social and economic circumstances (stress of immigration may itself cause disease) to the reasons behind the visit, its likely duration and the capacity and willingness of the visitor to communicate with the host population, and to the quality of the services within the host country. There are many other concerns regarding the social health of a multicultural and/or multiethnic society, both positive and negative – greater tolerance and understanding, sharing wisdom, enriching cultures as well as conflict, tension, divisiveness, intolerance and impoverishment. At worst, the negative aspects can lead to physical violence, but there are also the psychological health threats posed by isolation, exclusion, and conflict, that may be manifest as depression or other behavioural disturbances. A detailed discussion of these is beyond the scope of this chapter, but they are clearly a major threat to health within many communities. Tourists, students, business people, asylum seekers, illegal and legal immigrants, any and all people can all carry infectious disease. It is their presence in another country that poses the ‘threat’ – not their status whether as visitors or long-term residents. Dealing with this question from an epidemiological perspective, and keeping strictly to the case concerning ‘immigrants’ would clearly be limiting, unrealistic and heavily biased. On the other hand many asylum seekers are young, male and relatively healthy. Their health tends to deteriorate after arrival in the host country and this is largely attributed to isolation, loss of selfesteem and impoverishment in the host country. The psychological problems and the mental health of refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants are the subject of much concern. Threats to the psychological health of migrants depend upon the reasons behind the migration. Those who are forced to leave their home against their will may have suffered severe privations. They may have been threatened, sexually abused, imprisoned, or tortured. They may have lost close relatives. They may be the victims of illegal traffic. These threats may continue during flight and migration. Their responses will vary from a normal sense of loss, grief and uncertainty through to major and prolonged psychological disturbances and even suicidal tendencies. For those who may be able to offer care and counselling, it is important to recognise the differences between the natural responses of different people coming from different cultures with different behavioural patterns and the pathological disturbances that may require intensive, though sensitive and culturally appropriate responses. Very often the best approach is to create an
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environment that gives people security, companionship and a sense of worth within their new community. Too often, the indignities imposed by host governments during ‘processing’ of refugees and asylum seekers are counterproductive in managing stress and its impact.
Immigrants and Health The characterisation of immigrants from the perspective of health threats and assets is a complex one. Any legal definition of migrants as immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced persons etc., may serve a political or legal interest, but does not help to understand health risks, as these are unrelated to crossing borders. The definition of ‘immigrant’ implies a permanence in a country that is not their own (though other visitors may also stay for long periods of time). The reasons behind this desire to move from one country in order to settle in another may partly reflect any disease threats in the country of origin. The process of immigration itself may have an impact on the health of the immigrant. The long-term presence of foreigners usually increases the likelihood of interaction between visitor and host populations. However, in some communities, different ethnic groups maintain a high level of cohesion and can effectively isolate themselves from neighbouring groups. The short stay visitor of a week or two, such as a tourist, may or may not pose less of a health threat, though interaction may be greater. Tourism for the purposes of sex is the obvious example where brief interaction carries a very high risk of transmission of infectious disease. However, all who move from one environment to another, for whatever reason, are subject to health risks. To be able to assess health risks and assets, it is therefore vital to understand who is moving where and why. The cost of imported disease is also a concern for host nations with, for example, the rising costs of managing those with HIV infection arriving from countries where facilities for treatment hardly exists.
Who Moves Where and Why? In 2000, the UN estimated that 175 million people, 3 per cent of the world’s population lived outside of their country of origin. Of the world’s migrants, 32 per cent (56 million) work in Europe, 29 per cent (50 million) work in Asia, 23 per cent (41 million) in North America and 9 per cent (16 million) in Africa. Tourists, business people, students: the British make 56 million trips abroad each year and travel to exotic locations is becoming more popular. In the year 2000, 2 million visits were made to Africa from the UK. Globally it is estimated that 1 million people move between developed and developing countries each week (World Tourist Organisation). Visiting friends and relatives: for example, 40 per cent of the 2 million visits to Africa made from the UK in 2000 were made by people whose country of origin was Africa and who were visiting friends and relatives. Although this group make
Migration: A Threat or an Asset to Health? 181 a smaller proportion of journeys to disease endemic areas than other travellers, they appear to suffer the greatest proportion of illness of all groups of travellers. This may be related to specific diseases such as malaria. As was said earlier, immunity to malaria is dependent upon constant re-infection through mosquito bites. Absence from endemic areas for more than 6 months results in a loss of this naturally acquired immunity and leaves the individual vulnerable to infection if they return to the endemic area to visit relatives (Behrens, 2003). Refugees: at the start of 2001 the number of people ‘of concern’ to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees was 21.8 million. Afghans constitute the largest single refugee population in the world with an estimated 3.6 million people or 30 per cent of the global refugee population. Civilians from the central African state of Burundi constitute the second largest group with 568,000 refugees living mainly in Tanzania. Iraqis comprise the third largest population, 512,800 people living mainly in Iran. Asia as a whole has the greatest number of persons ‘of concern’, with nearly 8.5 million followed by Africa with 6.1 million and Europe with 5.6 million people. The main host countries remained unchanged with Pakistan sheltering two million persons, Iran 1.9 million and Germany 976,000. Asylum seekers: when people flee their own country and seek sanctuary in a second state, they apply for ‘asylum’ – or the right to be recognised as bona fide refugees with the legal protection and material assistance that status implies. In the last five decades, several million people were granted asylum in countries around the world. Currently, there are approximately 914,100 asylum applications pending worldwide. However, as travel and communication becomes easier and the number of people seeking asylum increases, some states, especially leading industrial countries, have toughened their domestic refugee legislation and criteria for granting asylum. For example, in 1976, only 7 per cent of UN nations had policies aimed at restricting immigration. In 2000, 40 per cent had them. Britain receives 0.04 per cent of the world’s refugees, ranking sixth in Europe and seventy-eighth in the world. It is the poorest nations who host the largest number of refugees. Undocumented or ‘illegal’ immigrants: an unknown number of migrants remain in the host countries either because they never applied for asylum or were rejected, or who overstayed short-term visas. Yet others are the victims of the traffic of young women and children for work in the sex industry. This lack of any documentation makes them all particularly vulnerable to being ‘lost’ to the system and having no access to health care or any welfare benefits. Adopted children: this is a small group of ‘involuntary’ migrants, as they are often very young and rarely have a choice in the matter. They include those adopted internationally and domestically. These children may be at an increased risk of harbouring or acquiring a communicable disease as disease prevalence varies between and within many countries. Careful assessment and surveillance will ensure early detection and proper management of any disease. Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs): there are between 20–25 million people who are internally displaced within their own country for reasons of insecurity or
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threat to livelihoods. Major concentrations are in Sudan, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Colombia, BosniaHerzegovina and countries of the former Soviet Union. Here it should be mentioned that family members who stay at home, often invest heavily in helping a family member to migrate, whether domestically or internationally, in the hope of recouping on their investment through remittances. The health of those who stay behind is often worse than the one who is given the chance to migrate. Each of these different categories of people will carry different health risks and each can, potentially bring different health benefits. However, the major reason for disease and ill health that underlies many of the risks associated with migration is poverty. One way to eliminate much of the health risk associated with migration is to promote a more equitable distribution of resources worldwide and to alleviate poverty. Why is poverty the problem and what do we mean by ‘poverty’ anyway?
Poverty: A Cause and a Result of Ill Health, Displacement and Migration Poverty is ill defined and has complex origins. However, those people who live on less than US$1 a day are considered to be poor by almost any measure – and a fifth of the world’s population live on less than US$1 a day. Nearly half live on less than US$2 a day. Many displaced people are poor, but not usually the poorest in any community, as immigration can be a costly business requiring considerable investment from whole families. Many come from poor environments, but are often skilled. It is estimated that 75 per cent of migrants from Africa have some college education. Many displaced people move from one poor environment another within their own country or in neighbouring countries. Again the presence of borders has little impact on health threats or assets, other than an increased likelihood of being categorised as ‘immigrant’ with attendant prejudices and fears. At the same time, the majority of those seeking asylum, sanctuary or a better life in industrialised countries are also relatively poor, or persecuted, or both. Whatever the cause of their displacement, the many refugees will – and do – return home when conditions are more favourable. Poverty and inequity between the rich and the poor are inextricably linked to ill health, ignorance, frustration, grievance and unrest. They are the underlying causes of the decline in health amongst the world’s poorest people.10 Poverty is also one of the principal determinants of the pattern of disease in any environment and the threat to health amongst migrants is mostly that of the ‘diseases of poverty’, whether communicable, degenerative or psychological. It is impossible to separate the risk of disease, from the poverty that so often prompts migration and displacement. Individual and State poverty also closely reflects the vulnerability of communities to withstand natural shocks that may precipitate displacement such as earthquakes, floods, drought and famine.11
Migration: A Threat or an Asset to Health? 183 In the wealthier countries, access to basic health services is relatively secure. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the prevention, treatment and control of communicable disease in these countries has been maintained through knowledge of public health, access to safe water supplies, adequate sanitation, secure food supply, improved education and the availability of antibiotics and vaccines through accessible and affordable health care delivery systems. In the countries where most immigrants come from, poverty exposes individuals and families to health risks from poor housing, inadequate sanitation, insecure diets and hazardous occupations, whilst State poverty in these countries leads to the inadequate provision of services including health and education. In almost all of the countries of the world, disparities between the health of the wealthy and the poor are well documented – and the gap is growing. Whilst poverty may be a principal cause of migration, it can also be a result. When people leave their homes and migrate to countries where they have an uncertain future, they can easily and quickly become disorientated and demoralised. Access to work and social services may be difficult and the loss of self-esteem can result in descent into relative poverty. Host countries may be either unable or unwilling to provide their visitors with the necessary support. Poverty, or more importantly inequity is a significant cause of unrest and disaffection. Exclusion, ignorance, fear, despair and hopelessness are fertile breeding grounds for the development of repressive regimes, anger, and violence both domestic and State. The vast and growing gap between rich and poor, and between those who control global resources and those who are excluded from the process of deciding how these resources are to be used globally, is a potent source of anger and aggression. Terrorist attack is at one extreme of the spectrum of responses to this anger and the risk from individuals travelling for the purpose of using communicable disease agents as weapons is of concern in many of the wealthier countries. However, a principal concern of richer nations lies less in the actual use of biological or chemical agents and more in the capacity of their health systems to cope with mass attacks. For example the Russian government used chemical weapons to end the theatre siege by Chechen terrorists in 2002.12 Any attempt to prevent the ill health and migration associated with poverty must address the root causes. Any such attempt must involve not only the poor themselves and their nation-states but also crucially those with the wealth, the stability and the means to make the changes to these global inequities. And yet, despite unprecedented global wealth, the failure to alleviate the severest forms of poverty in the world is acknowledged by the World Bank. Wealth is now polarised between those countries where wealth is increasing and a group of countries where it remains static. In the World Development Report for 2002, The World Bank warns of a world of growing inequity, environmental degradation and social breakdown that will affect us all unless there is a major change in global policies. In the autumn of 2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg offered another opportunity for the world’s leaders to address
184 Personal and Economic Security these global concerns. Whether they did this successfully for the long-term future remains a contentious matter.
Assets to Health Arising from the Movement of People Many of the assets that migrants bring are obvious. Tourists, business people and other visitors bring hard currency and contribute to the nation’s economy. For example, America benefits from migrants to the tune of US$10 billion annually (Economist, 29 March 2001). Those who are granted work permits or limited leave to remain and those who are accorded the status of permanent resident also bring skills, knowledge, labour, and other resources. An obvious example is the UK National Health Service, which would be much weaker without the skills of many immigrants. (Conversely the current practice of recruiting health staff from poorer countries constitutes a threat to their health services and therefore the health of their people.) Immigrants who find work in host countries can provide vital financial support to family and friends back home. For some of the poorest countries, the remittance of funds plays a significant part in the national economy. In 2000, the World Bank estimated that around US$63 billion was sent home by migrant workers, exceeding all official aid from rich countries and multilateral agencies The mixing of diverse cultures can and does enrich and enlighten all communities. It can also bring enmity and fear if the poorer ethnically diverse groups are forced into ghettos through policies that further divide the rich from the poor. Human beings, like all other animals, instinctively seek to strengthen the gene pool of their children by finding a mate of strength, gentleness, intelligence, beauty, wit, cunning, power, wealth or preferably all of the above! Greater contact between the peoples of the world could favour a strengthening of this gene pool to everyone’s benefit!
What Can Be Done to Manage the Threats and Assets to Health Arising from Migration? 1
A full understanding of the real and imagined threats to health is the first requirement for any rational policy to manage these threats and make optimal use of the real and potential assets from migration and immigrants. Many refugees, asylum seekers and other immigrants arriving in a host country may be at a great disadvantage with regard to their health and access to health care. Some may arrive unwell and benefit from immediate and effective care and treatment. Others may arrive well and see their health deteriorate over time. There are great differences amongst refugees, including age, gender, religion and past experiences that all demand different approaches to care and support. Rigorous surveillance is essential to ensure that knowledge of risks is complete, accurate and constantly updated. Unwarranted fears and politically inspired rumour can promote fear and racism. These must be addressed and countered.
Migration: A Threat or an Asset to Health? 185 2 Much can be, and is being done by governments, specialised agencies, formal and informal groups and individuals in host countries to ensure that immigrants are made welcome and that they are assisted in finding security and access to health and education services. A just and transparent process to assess application for asylum will minimise any further threats to the health of those already traumatised by the experiences that prompted their leaving home. 3 Current immigration policies often lack clarity and are subject to regional variation. At ports of entry, health-screening facilities are often inadequate to deal with increasing numbers of visitors. Even when individuals are identified on arrival as being at risk of illness, they are often lost to the health care system after arrival due to the limited capacity for tracing and referral through the health system. The current barriers to immigration erected by governments more concerned with the views of their electorate, who may be ill informed, often put the safety of migrants at risk. Many are forced into the hands of organised criminals who traffic in human cargo for large cash payments or who are engaged in selling children and young women into the sex industry. 4 Social support structures need to be improved to ensure stability amongst immigrants and the minimising of stress related diseases associated with migration. For example, the policy of dispersing immigrants throughout the UK and the introduction of the voucher scheme for immigrants to buy essential supplies both undermined their self-esteem and threatened further their stability. Similarly, the practice of detaining immigrants in what amounts to prisons can have a serious impact on health, especially on the mental health of those who have previously experienced detention without trial and even torture. 5 Many migrants are highly skilled, but unable to practise these skills without re-training in countries that don’t recognise their original qualifications. Doctors, nurses and other health professionals are an example and schemes to facilitate their validation are underway in the UK. The identification and retraining of refugee nurses, doctors and other health professionals for employment in the host country makes sound economic sense, with the ultimate objective of integrating services and service providers. On the other hand, a parallel service provided for refugees, by refugees, could encourage further isolation and should be avoided. 6 Access to health care services within the host country can be improved. For some the simplest of measures would suffice. For example, language may be the only barrier and the availability of interpreters the simple solution. Welcoming groups are already established to ease the process of immigration for those unfamiliar with the ways of the host country. 7 Quarantine of those with infectious disease has its place. An example, albeit from the animal kingdom, can be taken from the recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease amongst livestock in the UK. Earlier and complete restriction on the movement of livestock within the UK would have dramatically
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Personal and Economic Security reduced the impact of the epidemic. Human beings however, have more rights than animals and fewer restrictions of this sort are possible. They would no doubt be employed in the event of the introduction of an untreatable lethal infection that could be spread easily by casual human contact. This is of course the subject of current concerns regarding the risk of terrorists using infectious disease as weapons. It is clearly important to identify migrants – and others – who have a dangerous infectious disease, and to impose a period of quarantine on them to protect both themselves and those who may come in contact with them. For example, in some parts of the world, Tuberculosis has become resistant to most, if not all of the drugs commonly used to treat it. Patients with multi-drug resistant TB clearly need special care, both to ensure the best chance for their recovery and to protect those in close contact with them. On the other hand, the restriction on movement that accompanies the current practice of detaining immigrants for long periods can itself exacerbate emotional disturbance and psychological disease. It can also facilitate the spread of infectious disease amongst people living in close contact, in less than ideal circumstances and under the severe stress of confinement against their will. At the international level, we can begin to address the fundamental causes of forced migration through a better understanding of the causes of poverty and ill health that have been discussed above. As Ruud Lubbers, the UN High Commissioner for refugees and former Prime Minister of the Netherlands said in 2001. ‘You cannot complain about huge numbers of people moving around the world if you are not prepared to give the money that is needed for solutions in the regions where refugees come from’. And yet, although the world’s richest countries made a commitment to provide 0.7 per cent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a contribution to overseas development several decades ago, to date only a few have fulfilled this promise. The UK has recently increased its contribution considerably, but even now this has only reached 0.4 per cent. In the meantime, half the population of the world (3 billion people) live on less than the US$2.2 a day. By comparison every cow in Europe receives US$2.2 a day as subsidy under the European Union’s common agricultural policy. Many of the poorest countries carry a debt burden in excess of their investment into health and education and other basic services. And yet despite a vigorous campaign to secure cancellation of this debt, progress has been painfully slow with only a handful of countries currently benefiting (see Jubilee Plus website). Debt relief must take on a new momentum and focus more on the needs of debtor countries rather than concentrating on limiting losses to the creditor countries. To compound these disadvantages, the poorest countries benefit least from current world trade agreements. World trade regulations must be revised to prevent a further increase in the gap between rich and poor and to reverse the decline in the health status of the very poor. The poor are indeed getting poorer.
Migration: A Threat or an Asset to Health? 187 10 The need to protect the vulnerable worldwide has long been recognised in a number of UN Conventions, signed by most of the countries of the world. Many include concepts of Human Rights, including the Right to Health. This ‘Right’ extends to all people within a signatory country, including visitors. These Conventions exist to be invoked to promote equity and to limit exploitation. When these Conventions are honoured by all signatory countries, the question of whether immigrants are either a threat or an asset to health will be no more or less relevant than whether our next-door neighbours pose such a risk. 11 A fundamental review of Overseas Development Assistance and the monetary policies insisted upon by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is essential if the international development targets are to be met. When they have been met, many of the reasons why people migrate will no longer apply. The preservation of health and the protection of people from disease in one part of the world will inevitably preserve and protect people in other parts of the world. This concept of health as a ‘Global Public Good’ has increasing relevance in a world that becomes ever smaller and where every corner becomes ever more accessible to all of us.
References Behrens, R. H., (2003) ‘Visiting friends and relatives’, in J. S. Keystone, P. Kozarsky, D. O. Freedman, H. D. Nothdurft and B. Connor (eds.), Travel Medicine, Mosby, St Louis, MO. Health, Nutrition and Population Strategy Paper, World Bank, 1997. Human Development Report, United Nations Development Programme 2002. Primary Health Care. The Declaration of Alma Ata, World Health Organisation 1978.
Websites United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. www.unhcr.org United Nations Family Planning Association. www.unfpa.ch The World Health Organisation. www.who.int/wer The International Centre for Migration and Health. www.icmh.ch The International Organisation for Migration. www.iom.int The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. www.lshtm.ac.uk The British Medical Association. www.bma.org.uk The Royal College of Nursing. www.rcn.org.uk Refugee studies group. www.qeh.ox.ac.uk/rsc Refuge Council. www.refugeecouncil.org.uk Public Health Laboratory Service Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre. (PHLS CDSC). www.phls.org.uk The Home Office. Migration to the UK. www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk Amnesty International. www.amnesty.org.uk. Centers for Disease Control Atlanta. www.cdc.gov Medact. www.medact.org London Health Observatory. www.lho.org.uk Debt and debt relief. www.jubileeplus.org
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Meeting the health needs of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Department of Health. www.doh.gov.uk/hsd/asylum seekers.htm World Tourism Organisation. www.world-tourism.org World Bank. www.worldbank.org Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. www.torturecare.org.uk
Further reading A guide for refugee doctors, BMA and Jewish Council for Racial Equality. For refugee doctors wanting to practice in the UK. Angela Burnett and Michael Peel, ‘Health needs of asylum seekers and refugees’, BMJ, Vol. 322, 3 March 2001, 544- 547. Angela Burnett and Michael Peel, ‘What brings Asylum seekers to the UK?’, BMJ, Vol. 322, 24 February 2001, 485–488. Angela Burnett and Michael Peel, ‘The health of survivors of torture and organised violence’, Angela Burnett, Michael Peel, BMJ, Vol. 322, 10 March 2001, 606–609. Carballo, H., Divino, J.J. and Zeric, D., ‘Migration and health in the European Union’, Tropical Medicine and International Health, 1998 Dec; 3(12):933–934. Immigrant and refugee health. Emergent infectious disease, 1998 July-Sept.; 4(3):427–428. Migration and health, Newsletter of the International Organisation for Migration based in Geneva. www.iom.int Weekly epidemiological record from the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Notes 1 I am grateful to the following for advice on this short chapter. Ron Behrens, Angela Burnett, Dawn Chatty, Caroline Hyde-Price, Nicolette Lawrie, Giovanna Maria, Catherine Peckham, Ann Sommerville, Joanne van Selm and Elspeth Guild. I am also grateful to my wife Hilary Belchak for her insights on various drafts and also to Maggie Lloyd for her invaluable comments. Any and all errors are mine. 2 When Europeans reached the Americas in 1492, the ‘globalization’ of trade took a leap forward, as did the ‘globalization’ of infectious disease. In the ensuing centuries, many of the original ‘Americans’ died from imported infectious disease. The invading Europeans no doubt took a few diseases back to Europe with them. 3 A woman in Somalia considered herself ‘healthy’ if she could walk 3 miles and bring back a bucket of water. A woman in the UK went to her doctor after many years suffering from cystitis. When asked why she hadn’t attended before said, ‘I thought it was normal for all women to suffer from cystitis’. 4 ‘An illness due to a specific infectious agent or its toxic products that arises through transmission of that agent or its products from an infected person, animal or inanimate reservoir to a susceptible host, either directly or indirectly through an intermediate plant or animal host, vector or the inanimate environment.’ Control of Communicable Diseases Manual 1995, A.S. Benenson (ed.), American Public Health Association. 5 An example of the impact of measles in a community previously uninfected can be found in Fiji in 1875. Shortly after the start of British colonial rule, the paramount chief of Fiji returned from a state visit to Australia with measles acquired whilst abroad, he inadvertently started an epidemic that reduced the population by almost half in the subsequent years. Measles was unknown in Fiji until then and no one was immune to it. The infection quickly spread throughout the entire population. There were many deaths as a result of the disease itself and many more died because so
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many were ill at the same time that little care was available. The need to bring in an Indian labour force following this epidemic has to some extent formed the current political makeup of the country. HIV, which causes AIDS, was not recognised before the early 1980s. Towards the end of 2001, UNAIDS estimated that 40 million people were living with the infection worldwide, the majority of whom were in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2001 alone, around 3 million people died of AIDS and over 4 million adults were newly infected, as were over 800,000 children under 15. This global pandemic has yet to reach its peak. It has already devastated the lives of individuals and families as well as the economies of communities and nations. For example, in 1918 and 1919, the world suffered a major influenza pandemic. This infection is air borne and in one year at least 25 million people died worldwide, including around 228,000 people in Britain. A similar global epidemic today would proceed at a much faster pace with the risk of care services being overwhelmed, especially in poorer countries with fewer facilities. The recent SARS outbreak seems to have been contained (July 2003) but offers a timely warning. The emergence of a virulent strain of influenza virus amongst chickens in Hong Kong in 1997 (‘bird flu’), which began to infect people, was a warning of what could have happened if the conditions had been different. The strain of influenza virus (H5N1) was first found in terns in 1961. It became widespread amongst chickens in Hong Kong in the mid-1990s. The first human case occurred in 1997. This strain of influenza virus had not been shown to affect people before and prompt action to kill 1.2 million chickens and 400,000 other birds in the Hong Kong markets stopped the outbreak. In 2001, an epidemic of foot and mouth disease in the UK had a devastating impact on the livelihoods and therefore the health of many in the farming and tourist industries. The full economic and political impact of this epidemic as a result of current animal husbandry policies and the international trade in livestock have yet to be fully realised. Between 1982 and 1985, the USA was the main exporter of Factor VIII, a life saving treatment of Haemophilia. At this time, there was also an epidemic of HIV amongst haemophiliacs in the US. In 1993, 64 per cent of HIV infection in Japan was amongst haemophiliacs who had been treated with Factor VIII imported from the US. More recent examples illustrate the current desire for, and potential risks of the availability of fresh produce year round from anywhere in the world. Outbreaks of enteric infections, including E. coli bacillus from contaminated sprouting vegetables have been reported. Another infectious organism, Cyclospora cayetanensis, that was first identified in 1977, has been implicated in international outbreaks of diarrhoeal disease as a result of the importation of contaminated raspberries and strawberries. For example, a quarter of all children living in low income countries die before they are five and the chances of dying simply as a result of being pregnant are one hundred to one thousand times greater in poor countries than in rich countries. For example, when Hurricane Mitch hit Central America, including the southern USA, the resultant cost in Honduras, a poor country, was measured in lives lost; in the USA, deaths were few and the cost was measured in dollars required to repair the buildings, roads and bridges. Honduras could do little to warn its people. Poor people living in poor housing built on vulnerable sites could do little to prevent their homes from sliding down the mountains or collapsing under the impact of the Hurricane. The State could do little to help those made homeless. Deaths from disease, displacement and lack of care were much greater than in southern USA, just a few miles away, where houses are better able to withstand such ‘natural’ shocks and where people had options and time to leave, to seek safety and to access food, water and health care from their wealthy Government.
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12 ‘The UK and other Western governments must ensure that they are ready to deal with a terrorist attack using biological weapons, such as anthrax, botulism or the smallpox virus, the World Health Organisation warned yesterday’, The Guardian, 26 September 2001. According to the World Medical Association an attack with some infectious agents could take place without the authorities becoming unaware until people begin to get sick. The WHO has put a report called The Health Aspects of Biological and Chemical Weapons on its website. It acknowledges that an effective attack might be ‘on such a scale or of such a nature as to be beyond the capability of the healthcare system to cope’.
12 Homeownership and the Integration of Immigrants in the United States Andrew I. Schoenholtz1
Housing is a critical element of the household well-being of both native and foreign-born populations in developed countries. Those living in isolated, lowincome areas often confront significant challenges to employment in addition to overcrowding and its effects, for example. On the other hand, sustainable homeowners build financial equity while often enjoying good access to employment and education. Research in the US and elsewhere shows that immigrants generally do not fare as well as most natives in terms of renting apartments or owning homes. The extent to which the foreign-born population achieves housing parity with the native population reveals the degree to which immigrants integrate into their host societies. When integration seriously fails, societies face the myriad problems associated with marginalized populations. In contrast, successful integration strengthens the economic and social foundations of societies. This article focuses on housing and the integration of immigrants particularly in the United States. References are made to important aspects of these issues in Europe. Before discussing housing and integration, the article provides important demographic information to set the issues in the American context. Rental housing and homeownership issues are then explored, both to understand these phenomena in terms of the foreign-born and to identify the challenges that immigrants face in becoming sustainable homeowners. The article then presents a case study of housing in one of America’s new immigrant settlement areas, Northwest Arkansas, and analyses the implications of the case study findings through an integration lens. The article concludes with recommendations on how to create sustainable homeownership opportunities for immigrants.
America’s New Immigrants An historically high wave of immigration is creating profound changes in the United States’ urban, suburban, and rural makeup. Most of the United States’ 33 million immigrants arrived after 1980. Every year, 1 million new immigrants come, and there is no indication that the pace is slowing. More than 75 per cent of the foreign-born population comes from Latin America or Asia. In 2003,
192 Personal and Economic Security Hispanics became the nation’s largest minority group. Today 50 per cent of surveyed Hispanics are foreign-born, up from 36 per cent in 1990. Immigrants settle where jobs and family are. Almost 40 per cent live in the West, nearly 30 per cent in the South, almost 25 per cent in the Northeast, and some 10 per cent in the Midwest.2 Immigrants are both concentrated and beginning to spread out. While more than 70 per cent live in six states, there are now 35
Population (millions)
30 25 20 15 10
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Figure 12.1 America's Newest Immigrants
Central America (including Mexico) 11.8 million 37%
Other Latin America 5.1 Million 16% Africa, Oceania, Canada, & Other 2.7 Million 8%
Asia 8.2 Million 25%
Europe 4.5 Million 14%
32.5 Million Immigrants Source: US Census Bureau: March 2003 Current Population Survey
Figure 12.2 Latin Americans and Asians Dominate Foreign-Born
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almost 20 states with more than 250,000 foreign-born, including North Carolina, Colorado, Michigan, Washington, and Connecticut. Figure 12.3 shows where immigrants continue to concentrate, and Figure 12.4 shows new settlement areas. Jobs and quality of life reasons, such as housing and education, are attracting immigrants to these new areas. Immigrants are about evenly divided between central cities and suburbs (Figure 12. 5). They have revitalised inner city neighbourhoods and changed California (8.9 million) 28.4%
All Other (9.9 million) 31.7%
New York (3.9 million) 12.4% Florida (2.8 million) 8.6%
Illinois (1.5 million) 4.7%
Texas (2.9 million) New Jersey 9.3% (1.5 million) 4.7%
Source: US Census Bureau – Census 2000
Figure 12.3 Immigrants are Concentrated
WA MT
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Percent Change in Foreign Born 1990 –2000 0–54______U.S. Average: 54.4 55 –99 100 –199 200 –273 Data Sources: US Census Bureau, 1990 Summary Tape File 3 (STF 3) – Sample data and Census 2000 Supplementary Survey Summary Tables (ACS).
Figure 12.4 New Settlement Areas
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Source: US Census Bureau: March 2003 Current Population Survey
Figure 12.5 Immigrants Live Mostly in Cities and Suburbs
suburban school systems. In a trend that began during the last decade of the twentieth century, immigrants now reside in once mostly native-born rural areas. Since 1995, the foreign-born have contributed fully a third of household growth in the nation – the factor that accounts for most new residential construction in the United States. Immigration is a particularly important force in the Northeast, accounting for more than half of household growth. The influx of immigrants, together with losses of older white households, has pushed minority household growth far ahead of white household growth in both absolute and relative terms. Immigrants contributed more than 50 per cent of Hispanic and over 80 per cent of Asian household growth between 1996 and 2000.
Housing, Immigrants, and Integration Research makes it clear that most foreign born confront fundamentally different housing experiences than the vast majority of natives in the United States. In America’s major gateway city, New York, for example, ‘Foreign-born householders are significantly less likely than native-born householders to be homeowners and more likely to encounter affordability problems and live in crowded and unsound housing units’.3 Location and neighbourhood quality influence a wide variety of important outcomes such as employment and educational attainment. In a major study of these issues in the Chicago area, researchers examined outcomes for families on the waiting list for public housing who were given vouchers and assigned randomly to apartments in primarily white, middle-class suburbs or to units in
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‘revitalised’ neighbourhoods in the city proper. Unemployment was considerably higher in the urban neighbourhoods, and educational attainment was strikingly lower.4 A survey of research on these issues in the United States concluded that residential segregation by income is having an increasingly detrimental effect on low-income households, particularly in terms of labour market outcomes.5 This affects low-income natives and immigrants alike. In the US, 17 percent of natives and 31 per cent of foreign-born full-time, year round workers earned less than $20,000 in 2001.6 The median income of native full-time, year round workers in 2001 was over $35,000.7 Research regarding housing in London also links housing and unemployment. While the relationship between location, ethnicity and unemployment may be complex, this British study found that ‘minority ethnic unemployment is adversely affected by segregation or the tendency towards ghettoization. … The problem of unemployment appears to be particularly a feature of areas in which the ethnic minorities are heavily concentrated in public housing’.8 Residential segregation marginalizes even where immigrants may move to improve housing quality. A study that examined whether housing conditions for immigrants improved between 1985 and 1998 in Germany found that: although conditions have improved consistently for minorities in absolute terms, progress in relative terms has been much more limited. Furthermore, many of the gains in housing quality appear to have been made at the cost of moving out of Altbau housing in the inner city to large, more socially and geographically isolated, housing built after World War II. This housing, although an improvement in terms of the quality of the dwelling itself, is attracting growing numbers of foreign families, a group that can ill afford to bear the social consequences of living in these areas.9 In France as well, many immigrants reside in virtual ghettos. Half of the five million Muslims there are foreign-born. Many North African immigrants and French citizens of North African ancestry are relegated to public housing projects, some of which were originally built in the 1950s to house guest workers from the colonies. These suburban ghettos are largely ignored by the state. Charity groups from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states offer limited social services. Unemployment is very high, and gender violence is on the rise.10 As William Julius Wilson puts it: The immigrants in all these [European] countries are disproportionately represented in areas that feature the highest levels of unemployment. Although they are far from matching the depth and severity of the social dislocations that plague the inner-city ghettos of the United States, many inner-city communities and outer-city public housing estates in countries like France and the Netherlands have been cut off from mainstream labor market institutions and informal job networks, creating the vicious cycle of weak labor force attachment, growing social exclusion, and rising tensions.11
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One important route to greater economic security, of course, is homeownership. A very high priority for immigrants, homeownership is the most tangible form of settling in a new society. Integrating into another society is a long process with many steps along the way. Naturalization is one of those steps. In the United States, the American dream of homeownership is another. If homeownership is sustainable, the benefits are many. One of the major economic benefits is forced savings. As a long-term investment, homeownership generally provides families with a significant financial asset that can provide the support families need after retirement from the workforce or be passed on to future generations. Home equity remains the anchor of household wealth in the US.12 According to data collected by the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances, 42 per cent of the nation’s wealth is stored as home equity.13 Moreover, ‘[w]ell over one-half of the personal wealth held by lower income and minority homeowning households represents home equity’. According to the Executive Director of the Consumer Federation of America, Stephen Brobeck, ‘Paying off the mortgage on a home has been, and will continue to be, the easiest way for lower income and minority households to build personal wealth’.14 This equity translates into the greatest source of savings for education and retirement. Tax deductions for interest payments on mortgage loans and real estate taxes provide an additional financial benefit to immigrant homeowners. The median wealth of a low-income homeowner under age 65 is 12 times that of a similar renter.15 Sustainable homeownership generally contributes to a better quality of life and family stability. Low- and middle-income immigrants are far more likely to live in overcrowded apartments and spend at least half their income on housing than native-born Americans with similar incomes.16 About 15 per cent of immigrant households live in overcrowded housing.17 As opposed to rented apartments, homes are more often found in safer neighbourhoods with better school systems.18 The link between homeownership and community revitalization in low- and moderate-income areas is strong. Research indicates that homeownership increases the incentive to maintain property and the neighbourhood in which it is located. Homeowners are more likely to contribute to neighbourhood stability due to their higher levels of satisfaction with their homes and neighbourhoods, participation in voluntary and political activities, and longer tenure in their homes. In short, homeownership promotes family and community stability. According to Census data, homeowners reside in a community four times longer than renters. While more than one-third of low-income renters move each year, fewer than 8 per cent of owners move annually.19 This is one of the most important influences of homeownership on families and society. When neighbors stay in one place longer, they have more time to get to know one another and to establish social networks. It gives parents an opportunity to provide a dependable, consistent environment for children.20
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Like other homeowners, immigrants contribute more in taxes to local communities than do renters. This means they provide more funding for local spending on education, law enforcement, and other important community matters. Homeowners have a stake in their community that makes them more concerned about the quality of their school district and their city or town.21 Immigrant homeownership also contributes to the economic sectors that build and enable homeowners to maintain homes. Household growth is the primary driver of housing demand, and minority households will make up about two-thirds of net new households during the first decade of the twenty-first century.22 The home building industry benefits immediately as more and more immigrants buy new homes. The home maintenance, furniture, and appliance sectors of the economy also benefit from the fact that new homeowners change their spending patters as they move from renting to homeownership. Homeowners are much more likely to purchase landscaping or construction materials than renters. In the year of the home purchase, homebuyers often engage in a surge of home-related spending.23 In the US, immigrants are three times as likely as all adults to rank buying a home as their number one priority.24 Despite this prioritization, their homeownership rates lag well behind those of the native-born (70 per cent for natives, 49 per cent for foreign-born).25 It is likely that the same problem exists in Europe, but homeownership data is generally reported based on ethnicity rather than country of origin, so the direct comparison between natives and foreign-born is not available. In Germany, for example, the homeownership rate for Germans was 38 per cent in 1998 and 13 per cent for those of foreign-origin. The foreignorigin population includes many born in Germany.
Barriers to Immigrant Homeownership in the US Many immigrants to the United States have a strong desire to become citizens and have their children belong in their new land. Over 5 million immigrants naturalized during the last 7 years.26 Many immigrants perceive homeownership as a milestone in becoming settled, in feeling a part of a new community, in integrating into American society. To become sustainable homeowners, however, immigrants must navigate the mortgage loan process, which is a difficult challenge for anyone, native- or foreign-born. They need to learn a financial credit system that is complex and often foreign to them. This information is not taught in the schools, nor does the US government, which strongly supports homeownership through fiscal policies, educate its population about the most important financial investment most will ever make. Understanding the US Credit System Several major barriers contribute to immigrants’ relatively low homeownership rates.27 Many immigrants bring with them old-country knowledge and customs
198 Personal and Economic Security regarding home buying and financial institutions. They generally do not have an understanding of why or how to participate in the US credit system of checking and savings bank accounts, credit cards, and loans. As noted earlier, most of the new immigrants come from Latin America and Asia. In their native countries, these immigrants generally were accustomed to conducting business in cash and face-to-face. The credit culture that most Americans take for granted is quite foreign to those for whom borrowing money from relatives is the norm. The idea of borrowing from a bank or other lending institution seems very strange to many new arrivals.28 In some cases, immigrants have heard stories about people in their country of origin whose life savings were lost when a bank went belly up, since bank accounts are not federally protected as they are in the United States.29 For some immigrants, their religion prohibits them from paying interest on a loan. Researchers have found that for many immigrants, debt to anyone other than relatives is disliked, not only because it puts one at the mercy of a stranger, but because it adds a cost to the transaction in terms of interest. In addition, America’s credit culture is quite novel to many new immigrants as it is founded on incurring debt in order to establish a credit rating. Often, they arrive with a distrust of financial institutions and do not open checking or savings accounts. In certain countries, banks are not as reliable as they are in the developed world and are rarely found in rural areas, where many US immigrants originate. Many immigrants have a general distrust of those in positions of power or authority as well as of large, impersonal institutions. In many cases in their home countries, bank accounts are used mainly for commercial business transactions; individuals seldom have savings or checking accounts. Many newcomers do not understand important aspects of the credit approval process and requirements. Those who come from societies where a very large down payment is the rule often assume the same applies in the United States. To learn the American system, many immigrants have to unlearn the knowledge brought from the home country. At the point when they might like to purchase a home, many immigrants cannot demonstrate conventional credit histories or document earnings. In many cases, employers do not provide immigrants with regular pay stubs and do not report all income to the government. Immigrants’ cash payments for their work off the books do not register under conventional approaches. While they may pay rent, their names may not be on the leases. New immigrants live in larger groups to save money for other priorities, so they contribute to rental payments ‘unofficially’. As their contribution is likely to be in cash, there is no documentation of such regular payments. The same is true with regard to utility payments. Other common means of demonstrating credit history – credit cards and checking accounts – are little used by new Americans. A 2002 survey by the Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser Family Foundation, for example, found that less than one-half of foreign born Latinos in the US have credit cards, while more than three-quarters of native whites do. Among other causes, this may go back to challenges immigrants face in establishing a credit history. Less than 60 per cent
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of foreign-born Latinos have bank accounts, compared with 95 per cent of the native white population.30 Many financial institutions use conventional tools to measure credit worthiness. Immigrants often are deemed ineligible for financing when a computer screens their conventionally measured assets and income. Standardized screening used by national underwriters to determine the creditworthiness of mortgage applicants often misses the complete financial portrait of the new immigrant who works more than one job, is paid in cash, pays bills in cash, and is not named on the lease. In general, the computerized process was not set up to do more than fill in the blanks for bank assets, credit card histories, rental payment history, etc. Language Impediments Limited ability to understand and speak English keeps many immigrants outside the mainstream home buying industry. Immigrants with professional and business careers don’t face this problem (though they, too, confront some of the other barriers discussed above), but less-well-educated and lower-skilled immigrants have more difficulty communicating in English. To overcome this limitation, immigrants sometimes turn to ‘cultural brokers’ – some legitimate, but others not. Trust is key to the home buying process, and many immigrants prefer to negotiate this complex set of procedures with the help of someone from their community. ‘Cultural brokers’ can be involved in any of the various home buying stages. They may be real estate agents, mortgage lenders, or communitybased workers. Many provide valuable help to immigrants, for example, in completing mortgage applications that document all possible positive elements and fully explain any negative elements. The ‘cultural broker’ may be the loan officer who presents the mortgage application to the bank’s underwriters or loan committee, or the low-income housing counsellor who advises the applicant how to improve his or her credit record by paying off debts, consolidating loans, or closing charge accounts.31 Problems have arisen, however, with some ‘cultural brokers’ who take advantage of the language and cultural gaps between the immigrants and the mainstream home buying system.32 Some ‘cultural brokers’ steer immigrants towards specific lenders, raising costs considerably for these unknowing immigrants. Access to Affordable Housing Conventional mortgage products often are out of financial reach for low-income immigrants. In recent years, lower interest rates and down payment requirements have made it easier for low-to-moderate income immigrant households to obtain home financing. But for many new immigrants who work at unskilled jobs, a 5 per cent down payment requires more in assets than such newcomers can manage.
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Affordable housing, particularly in high-cost urban markets, is difficult to find. Neither flexible financing criteria nor lower down payments can compensate for housing prices that are far beyond a family’s means.
Overcoming Barriers to Immigrant Homeownership Research has long shown that the longer immigrants live in the United States, the more likely they are to overcome these barriers and purchase homes. Homeownership rates are closely tied to citizenship status, income and duration of US residence.33 Naturalized citizens who entered the United States before 1990 have about a 68 per cent homeownership rate – about the same as natives. The rate is dramatically lower for those immigrants who have not been naturalized and for all immigrants who entered the United States since 1990. But more recent research has demonstrated that innovative institutional changes can enable many immigrants to overcome these barriers as well.34 Effective strategies include understanding immigrant markets, creating institutional capacity and partnerships to reach immigrants, and developing financial tools that reflect the immigrant experience. Thanks to such innovation, more and more immigrants are learning how the US credit system works. Most often, this happens through the many community service organizations that work with a variety of low-income populations. Financial institutions often support homeownership education and counselling by the non-profit sector. One of the most innovative developments regarding financial literacy and homeownership education, discussed more fully below, involves Households (in millions) 67.2
Total 104.7 Native
93.1
Foreign Born
11.6
Naturalized Citizen
5.4
1990s entrants
0.3
Pre-1990s entrants
5.1
Noncitizen
6.3
1990s entrants
3.0
Pre-1990s entrants
3.2
69.5 48.8 66.5 42.3 68.1 33.5 22.6 43.1
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Homeownership Rate Source: US Census Bureau, Profile of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States 2000.
Figure 12.6 Homeownership Tied to Citizenship Status and Time in the US
70
80
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teaching seminars at the workplace. Importantly, some financial institutions have changed internally in order to serve foreign-born communities in the United States. While such developments are still in their early stages and many potential immigrant homebuyers are not yet reached, these activities promise greater integration into financial America for large numbers of immigrants. Indeed, for immigrants to learn the US credit system and understand how to become sustainable homeowners translates into more secure economic futures for themselves, community building and stability for others, and a new market for financial institutions. In addition, employers who make financial literacy possible for their immigrant employees develop a more stable and loyal workforce. Some of the best innovations regarding immigrant homeownership have been developed in America’s new settlement areas. Many of these areas have not seen foreign-born populations of any size since the nineteenth century. The following case study reveals how a bank in Rogers, Arkansas helped a new population of Hispanic immigrants become sustainable first-time homebuyers and at the same time helped enable a floundering business develop a group of loyal workers.35
Change Comes to Rural Northwest Arkansas A part of the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, Arkansas metropolitan statistical area (MSA), Rogers is a small town of 34,000, located in Northwest Arkansas. In 1998, the foreign-born population was estimated at over 4,000, or 12 per cent. Nearly all of these immigrants came to Rogers between 1992 and 1998, attracted by the availability of work in the poultry processing industry as well as the quality of life in the community. Poultry processing plants in the MSA experienced a tremendous upswing in turnover rates in the early 1990s. One poultry processor conservatively estimated turnover costs in these plants at $3,000–4,000 per worker, which includes the costs of new worker training and productivity losses. This problem so severely hurt production that certain plants were within two to three months of shutting down. In the early 1990s, the largest of these processors reported 700 unfilled job openings at any one time in all of their plants. Furthermore, the training period at the plants can take two weeks, which caused production lines to be constantly bogged down with the training and inconsistent skills of new workers. In 1993, large numbers of immigrants moved to the area to work in these plants. The first wave of workers consisted largely of married males of Mexican origin, mostly in their 20s and 30s, primarily from rural California. The usual scenario involved these workers moving into the community without their spouses and children. Families often stayed behind in the worker’s home country, and a large portion of the worker’s wages were sent home to support the family. This created a situation where workers employed innovative means to live as economically as possible on wages ranging from $8 to $9 per hour. Poultry processing is a 24-hour operation that relies on three daily shifts, and it was not uncommon for four or more workers to share rent on a two-bedroom housing
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unit. In such an arrangement, workers assigned to different shifts can maintain privacy even though sleeping quarters are shared, as each worker occupies a bed when another is at work.
The Community of Rogers, Arkansas Rogers is located in an MSA where the three major employers are leading players in sizeable industries: Wal-Mart Corporation General Offices (retailing), Tyson Foods, Inc. Corporate Headquarters (poultry processing) and J. B. Hunt Transport, Inc. (trucking-motor freight). The population of Rogers nearly doubled between 1980 and 1996, and up until 1990 there was very little ethnic diversity, with non-whites making up less than 5 per cent of the population, and only a handful of Spanish speakers. This situation led Rogers’ community leaders to quickly realize that they had no effective infrastructure to provide information to the newly arrived immigrant community. Local ministers, social work organizations, law enforcement and the school system came together to initiate dialogue, that is, to solicit leaders to come forward and do the right thing, and to circumvent any friction created by the integration of the immigrant community into the daily lives of long-time residents. John Sampier, Jr., who was the mayor of Rogers at that time, spearheaded much of this initiative. Sampier first sought out locals who could speak both English and Spanish, and use these individuals to assist in minimizing potential ‘hot spots’, that is, conflicts in the school system and neighbourhoods. His initial search yielded only two people. One was hired by the school system to bridge the two communities and to counsel children of immigrants and their parents. The other was a local bank’s community development officer.
The Bank Founded in 1915, First National Bank and Trust Company (now called Arvest Bank) is the largest and oldest bank currently operating in Rogers. The bank was purchased by Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart Corporation, in 1975 and is now part of the Arvest Bank Group, of which the Walton family is primary shareholder. Other Arvest-owned sister banks are operated in adjacent communities; the holding company operates banks in Northwest Arkansas, southwest Missouri, and central Oklahoma. In 1994, the bank’s senior management team recognized not only the problems and needs of the immigrant population, but a potential emerging market as well. Arvest Bank Group’s chairman encouraged the bank’s management to study active and aggressive entry into this market. With this high-level support, senior management asked the community development officer, Roland Goicoechea, who immigrated to the United States in 1962 when his family fled their native Cuba to escape the regime of Fidel Castro, to work with a bank task force on the banking needs of the new population. In addition to being a native Spanish speaker, Goicoechea had been acting as the mayor’s liaison with the
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growing population of Spanish-speaking immigrants. The bank’s senior management realized that the success of any attempt to reach this market lay in the ability to work in co-operation with major employers of newly arrived immigrants, in this case poultry processors. Goicoechea envisioned a way to improve the lives of Rogers’ newly arrived immigrants while at the same time addressing the turnover problems at local poultry processing plants. According to Goicoechea, our community saw the growth of industries that were targeting low-income immigrant workers by using overpriced credit to sell goods that were often equally overpriced, or of poor quality. The bank saw a way to educate these consumers and to make a conscious long-term commitment to this market segment. The bank task force discovered that most problems of newly arrived immigrants were rooted in a single issue: the lack of hope. Many of the newcomers were moving from areas with living conditions that the average native-born US citizen could not comprehend, with a social structure that often includes barriers to improving one’s quality of life. Perhaps, the task force surmised, the problem was not a lack of opportunities available to the immigrants now that they were in the US, but with the immigrants’ ability to believe that these opportunities actually existed. This led to the development of a financial seminar series entitled ‘Creating Hope in the Work Place’, taught in Spanish.
The Employers The state of Arkansas has long been a leading grower of poultry, and only recently did Georgia surpass the state as having the nation’s largest population of chickens. The perishable nature of poultry products dictates that processing must be performed near major growers. For this reason Arkansas is home to businesses that support the complete cycle of poultry processing, from farming, slaughtering, cleaning, cutting the carcasses to specifications, and down to preparation and precooking of microwaveable entrées. Information provided by the Rogers Area Chamber of Commerce indicates that the industry employs 2,000 workers in Rogers alone, with an annual payroll in excess of $25 million. It is estimated that every dollar paid to workers turns over six to seven times in the local economy. In addition, the industry occupies physical plants which represent a $200 million investment. Like many communities and industries across the nation, Rogers’ poultry industry has experienced an ongoing labour shortage, where there is a need to find a pool of labour that can quickly fill available jobs. Throughout the 1990s many communities have found themselves facing an ultimatum: either open doors in the community to immigrant workers or risk the loss of a major employer. Jobs in the poultry processing industry are often attractive to immigrant workers because these jobs are not seasonal, and they offer a climate-controlled environment, relatively attractive wages, and a comprehensive benefits package. In addition, most plants are located in smaller communities, and many workers prefer this location to one in a larger city.
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As the nation’s largest poultry processor, Tyson Foods employs over 70,000 people in 20 states. Nationwide, Hispanic workers currently comprise between 21 and 22 per cent of Tyson’s workforce; however, depending on the region, this percentage ranges from a high of 65 per cent to a low of zero. During the early 1990s the company experienced a nationwide turnover rate of 70 per cent, with an annual cost per lost worker of $3,000 to $4,000. Tyson employs over 11,000 workers in the four-county area including and surrounding Rogers, Arkansas. Each Tyson plant is evaluated as an autonomous operation, which means that each location’s continued operation is dependent on its bottom line. Rogers is home to three Tyson plants, with several other plants located within a 50-mile radius. The growth of the poultry industry in Northwest Arkansas has led to the creation of many employment opportunities; however, this growth has also led to widespread job vacancies as the pool of available workers has diminished due to a strong economy. This labour shortage reached a critical stage several years ago, at which time Tyson had 700 unfilled job openings in Northwest Arkansas alone. This situation has attracted workers from areas outside of both the region and the United States. One of First National’s most active business partners is North Arkansas Poultry, a Tyson subcontractor. With 300 employees working two daily shifts, the plant employs approximately 600 workers and has a $10 million annual payroll. Between 1990 and 1993, management of the plant reported a turnover rate of 200 per cent; in the words of one manager, ‘we were two months away from closing our doors’. The bank proposed a special partnership with the plant, whereby the bank would provide financial information classes for the workers. The plant agreed, hoping that their turnover rate would improve if they sponsored these classes and paid for the workers to attend them at the plant. The classes started in 1994. The bank’s Community Development Officer determined that the best place to teach the financial seminars was at the immigrants’ place of work, so he persuaded the poultry plant to facilitate its Spanish-language financial literacy seminars at the plant. The employer made two significant contributions to the success of these seminars for their immigrant workers. First, it provided classroom space at the plant that allowed the workers to learn about the US credit system and homeownership while they were alert and away from distractions. Second, it paid the workers to attend these classes as if they were on the production line; the classes were offered during regular working hours, with the production line shut down section by section.
Teaching Financial Literacy The challenge to the bank task force was how to design and then teach a financial literacy curriculum. Most of the newcomers to First National’s community had little formal education and no knowledge of the credit system in the United States. As more than one manager at First National pointed out, most bankers are too close to their profession and incorrectly assume that all consumers know how to do such basic transactions as writing a cheque, understand how bank
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accounts work, and have a basic trust of the banking system. Unfortunately, this is often not the case for newly arrived immigrants. Realizing that a lack of basic banking knowledge would frustrate both immigrant customers and bank associates, the bank relied on a curriculum that provided a foundation of financial knowledge: • • • • •
basic banking services; how to write a cheque; establishing a credit history; how to buy a house; and time value of money (retirement planning).
First National purposely designed the seminars using simple concepts. The first seminar, covering basic banking services, introduced financial services and gave a brief overview of future seminars. Attendees were taught the basics: the advantages of keeping money in the bank over keeping money at home, and the fact that no consumer has ever lost money on an FDIC (government)-insured deposit. The seminar on how to write a cheque included a pocket card, which translated the parts of the cheque (Pay to the order of, Memo, Dollars) into Spanish, and gave examples of writing the date and the cheque amount in English. The size of the class was typically limited to no more than ten workers, to insure that the instructor was able to give adequate instruction to students as they learn to write out cheques, fill out deposit slips and use the automated teller machine (ATM). During the early stages of implementing this model, the First National task force quickly realized that many immigrants entering the local economy desired a way to establish credit so that they could purchase a used vehicle with a reasonable loan, for example. Among native-born citizens of the United States, young adults often establish credit by having a parent co-sign for a first loan, or by dealing with a banker with whom the family has established a relationship. However, in most cases neither of these options would work for the newly arrived immigrants served by First National. The bank’s team worked together to devise a creative, low-cost way for these consumers to develop a credit history, in a manner that carried almost no risk for the bank. After discussing why banks and other lenders determine creditworthiness in part by making sure that an individual seeking a loan has paid off previous loans on a timely basis, the instructor explained that the bank offers an easy way to help consumers establish credit: 1. 2. 3.
The borrower applies for a one year, $1,000 term loan with monthly payments of approximately $85; Funds from the loan ($1,000) are invested in a certificate of deposit (CD) in the borrower’s name; and The bank holds the funds in the certificate of deposit as collateral for the loan.
Most bankers are averse to risk when dealing with borrowers who have no credit history, good or bad; however, the bank realized almost no credit risk on these
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loans since the CD was used as collateral. Because the CD earns interest, the net interest cost to the borrower is less than $15. By repeating this process twice, borrowers gain confidence in the lending process and in the banker. Seminar instructors from the bank gradually introduced more complex financial topics as workers attended subsequent seminars. The research indicated that homeownership was very important to the immigrants. When the first influx arrived, Rogers lacked a supply of affordable rental property for these newcomers. The male population often lived in overcrowded conditions, particularly before family members arrived. Homeownership became a key opportunity to creating better housing conditions for both immigrants and their families. The introduction of topics such as buying a house also offered the bank an opportunity to extend an invitation to those interested in specific bank services to see them at the bank. While the seminars gradually covered more complex subject matter, the seminar materials still broke down the topics into basic, understandable terms. Probably the most effective example of this occurred in the retirement planning seminar, where the instructor illustrated how a worker can immediately realize a return of 50 cents for every dollar invested. How? The answer is not a highly speculative stock or mutual fund, but the employee’s 401(k) retirement plan, which offers a 50 per cent employer match on contributions.
Preparing the Bank for the New Customers The bank recognized that educating the newcomers about the US credit system was not the only important educational challenge required before the immigrants could start banking: the bank itself needed to be prepared to receive these new customers. First National prepared in several ways. Cultural Training Most bank employees had no previous experience with an Hispanic population. The bank wanted not only to provide services to the newcomers, but to also do so in a friendly way. A community college professor was brought in to teach bank employees about the people they would be serving. His instruction addressed several fundamental questions about the newcomers: Where do the immigrants come from? What is rural Mexico like? Why are they in Rogers? How do they value family, church, and work? Why don’t they speak English? Hiring Bilingual Staff To provide services well, the bank wanted to make the newcomers feel welcome. In addition to providing staff with lessons on survival Spanish, the bank hired bilingual tellers and loan officers. That was not an easy task in Northwest Arkansas, as the newcomers represented the first major group of Spanish speakers in the area. Initially, the bank hired the US-born wife of a Mexican immigrant. Ultimately, the bank tapped various networks to find bilingual staff.
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The immigrant community itself included young adults who learned English as children in California schools. Their parents came to Rogers, and they completed high school there. The bank also brought on bilingual high school students as interns. They started as part-time employees and were hired full-time when they graduated. Finally, the bank tapped the network of multicultural leadership throughout the region for recommendations as to potential loan officers and tellers. Since the bank played an important role in community life, the bank was able to rely on its good relationships with such leaders to identify good talent. For example, the bank approached the director of the multicultural centre, the church, the community college, and various business owners for referrals. One lesson the bank learned is that it is important to quickly and aggressively build a pool of potential bilingual candidates. This enables the bank to select the very best from the beginning. By starting off with the very best, the non-Spanish speaking employees will understand that individuals are not hired for their language ability alone. In addition, any ethnic myths are quickly dispelled. Essentially the bank found it more effective to train a bilingual person to be a banker than to teach a banker to speak Spanish. The majority of their bilingual staff began as tellers and learned the business from the ground up. Those that showed promise were then promoted to new accounts officers. Some later advanced to loan assistants and three eventually became loan officers. Since the bank needed bilingual employees at a variety of levels somewhat quickly, promising staff were moved rapidly to higher levels of work. This at times brought complaints from the non-bilingual employees. The bank had required Spanish for the initial hire and believed that the language skills were like other talents individuals brought to the customer service tasks demanded of them. If they performed them well, the bank put them in other positions that required those skills. As other banks in Rogers also developed an immigrant clientele, the demand for bilingual bank employees resulted in a very competitive market for such individuals. Tellers and loan officers trained by First National found a very good market for their skills at area banks. These other banks clearly recognized their own need to prepare their banks for the newcomers. To do so, they enticed away several officers trained by First National. The lesson the bank learned here is that good talent should never be neglected. Developing Alternative Underwriting Guidelines The customary credit report did not fit the experience of many newcomers, who simply had no traditional credit history. To address this, the bank examined alternatives to traditional credit histories, which allowed loan officers to process loans applications and anticipate what underwriters need to know as they analyze the applicant’s creditworthiness based on such factors as employment, assets and credit-like history. For example, the payment histories for rent, utilities, water, and cable were used to supplement the traditional credit report. In addition, the bank used payment reports from used car agencies that typically accept
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instalment payments only in cash, and do not report to the three major credit agencies in the United States. Of the mortgage loans that First National has made to recent immigrants, 90 per cent have been Federal Housing Administration (FHA) or similar types, such as US Department of Agriculture Rural Development, Arkansas Development Finance Authority’s Home Buyers Assistance Program, or Fannie Mae’s Community Lending Program. Under FHA guidelines, a borrower cannot be turned down for having no credit history; instead, the guidelines emphasize employment stability and qualifying ratios (the ability to make payments based on income). In lieu of balances in bank accounts, cash in hand is also acceptable for payment of closing costs under FHA guidelines. In these instances, the bank asks the borrower to deposit the cash, and the borrower provides a letter explaining the cash and how it was saved. While a credit history is not necessary, one full year of employment history is required to qualify for an FHA loan. This was easily achievable for many of the recent immigrants who applied for mortgage loans, since most were seminar participants with a stable work history in a local processing plant. However, the bank’s underwriters noticed a number of circumstances where applicants were showing gaps in employment during the December holiday season. Lenders quickly realized the existence of a cultural practice where workers would quit jobs to go back to their native countries for the Christmas holidays, and then return to readily available jobs in the early part of the year. The bank’s underwriters responded by annualizing income from the months in which the applicant worked. Employers also assisted with this dilemma by encouraging employees to take a leave of absence during the holidays instead of quitting. This emphasis on establishing a full year of employment history in the United States is of great importance, because in many instances, previous employment in other countries cannot be verified.
Results Sustainable Homeownership In the first five years of the financial literacy seminars, over five hundred immigrant families purchased houses for the first time through mortgages from the Arvest Bank Group (which includes First National), with the majority of these families having bought their houses prior to 1997. In a pool of loans of this size, one expected a percentage of defaults approximating the community’s average of around 4 per cent; however, none of these loans were in default during this period. Information was not readily available on houses purchased in the area using loans funded through other mortgage lenders. Approximately half of the newly arrived immigrant buyers purchased newly constructed houses. Several new housing developments have been anchored and expanded by the infusion of investment from the immigrant community. In total, about 50 per cent of the newcomers became first-time homebuyers.
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Capturing a New Market and Increased New Business First National began its seminar series in September 1994. Based on information covering North Arkansas Poultry’s 650-member workforce, only 8 per cent of the poultry processor’s employees were First National customers prior to the first seminar. Results were rapid and dramatic: after eight months and two seminars, 37 per cent of the plant’s employees were customers; and after two years, 60 per cent were customers. At the end of this two-year period, employees of North Arkansas Poultry had total deposits at First National in excess of $1 million, and it was not uncommon for immigrant workers to open accounts with initial cash deposits of $5,000 to $7,000. In addition, 7.4 per cent of the employees had purchased houses with mortgage loans from First National with an average mortgage balance of $60,000, and 26.9 per cent had consumer loans with the bank, with an average loan balance of $2,400. This growth and success is in spite of the fact that almost all of the immigrant customers of First National had not previously been customers of a bank. While a certain percentage of any population either cannot or will not use banks, as of 30 April 1999, approximately 52 per cent of the immigrants in Rogers were customers of First National, representing a total of $26.5 million in business: $5 million in deposit accounts; $1.2 million in consumer loans; $20 million in mortgage loans; and $341,000 in commercial loans. Trends indicated that the average deposit account balance has increased, and the immigrant customers moved into new investment alternatives offered by the bank’s investment and brokerage subsidiary, such as mutual funds, annuities and stocks. First National’s share of the immigrant homeownership business is directly related to the lender’s seminars and preparation of the bank’s associates to serve immigrant customers. Underlying the bank’s success is the bridge of trust built between these new customers and the bank, through the use of bank associates to both conduct seminars and assist immigrant customers with loan applications when they came into the bank. While First National reaped considerable benefits in time from its approach to the new immigrant population of Rogers, the seven other banks in the city also benefited from the seminars. While these banks did not participate in the seminars, they gained a significant volume of new customers and issued hundreds of mortgages to the immigrants. The very fact that some have hired bilingual staff away from First National (paying higher salaries to provide them with incentives to switch bank employers) makes it clear that other banks also have seen a benefit to attracting immigrant customers. Stable Workforce The turnover rate in the chicken processing plants throughout the Rogers area has dramatically decreased. At North Arkansas Poultry, for example, the turnover rate in 1992 was 200 per cent. As of September 1999, the workforce there has only 15–20 per cent turnover. The employees are now 96 per cent Hispanic. North Arkansas Poultry saw improvement in the turnover rate after
210 Personal and Economic Security the seminars began. Management there claims that the new immigrant employees have been more loyal to the company because the employer helped them with both their banking and homeownership interests. A More Stable Community Concentrations of immigrants change the makeup of communities, and some natives fear such change. Local leadership can play a major role in ensuring that those fears are faced head-on and addressed. Usually, such fears are based on a lack of knowledge about individual immigrants and their cultures. When Mexican immigrants first came to Rogers, Arkansas in the 1990s, for example, they were mostly men without their families. They spoke little English and relaxed on weekend nights by drinking beer and playing loud music outside their rented housing. When some Rogers natives expressed concern about this behaviour, the then mayor brought the community together to talk about problems and to discuss cultural differences. This was done in a very constructive way that led to a better understanding on the part of the new immigrants as well as the already resident population. The local school system engaged a mediator to act as a student relations counsellor and address tensions among teenagers. The Parks Department created an adult soccer league. Local institutions worked to create an information bridge to acclimate newly arrived immigrants to the community, providing access to resources such as language training, life skills, financial training, and citizenship programmes. Institutions now routinely employ many bilingual people; for example, First National expects its employees to use very basic conversational Spanish to make the customer feel welcomed. In addition, there are now bilingual newspapers and radio stations, and the local cable system carries two Spanish-language channels. As some immigrants began to naturalise, some community members encouraged voter registration among newly naturalised citizens. As families arrived and First National taught immigrants how to become sustainable homeowners, Rogers natives learned that the values important to the immigrants were also ones of importance to the natives. Family mattered, as did religion. Homeownership mattered, too. What seemed very foreign at first became humanised. This didn’t mean that all Rogers natives appreciated who the immigrants were, but many did. In addition to building stable neighbourhoods, the newcomers preserved an industry that was close to closing its doors in Rogers. Immigrants, Homeownership, Integration and Recommendations for Change As this case study and others demonstrate,36 sustainable immigrant homeownership directly benefits the various affected stakeholders: the immigrants, US communities, financial institutions, and employers. But such benefits come from significant innovation, commitment, and effort by all the actors involved. The remainder of this chapter briefly describes and recommends a few key practices
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whereby financial institutions, together with community organizations, employers, and local governments, enable immigrants to achieve the American dream of homeownership. As the analysis suggests, partnerships, particularly between civil society and the private sector, play key roles in the success of these practices. A much fuller description and range of model practices is found in Reaching the Immigrant Market: Creating Homeownership Opportunities for New Americans.37 Those financial institutions that have prepared themselves internally to serve immigrant communities and successfully implemented sound marketing strategies based on solid research reap a variety of monetary rewards. Mortgage loans, deposit accounts, consumer loans, and commercial loans result from studied attention to the financial needs and cultural customs of particular immigrant groups. This is true for big institutions, such as Bank of America Mortgage which funds billions of dollars worth of loans to immigrant customers with little or no established credit history, as well as small ones, like First National Bank and Trust of Rogers (now Arvest Bank), which captured more than 50 per cent of the new immigrant market in their area. Innovative institutions recognize that immigrants are a very worthwhile market for a range of services. The amount of disposable income minority households have to spend on goods and services is increasing faster than that of white households in the US.38 To reach immigrant communities, however, requires a considerable investment of time and effort before it pays back. It also requires flexibility, new thinking, and sound research to understand who the newcomers are and how to work best with the large variety of immigrant communities in the US. This is quite a challenge to financial institutions, many of which are conservative by nature and averse to significant institutional change. In order to serve immigrant customers in the full range of financial services, including mortgage loans, financial institutions hire and train bilingual staff. They want immigrants to feel comfortable using their services, and they recognize that they need to take such steps to build trust as well. This is not a simple task. In Seattle, for example, one bank’s team of loan officers and processors spoke 17 languages and dialects to serve immigrants from China, El Salvador, Hong Kong, Korea, Laos, Mexico, the Philippines, Russia, Taiwan, the Ukraine, and Vietnam.39 The bilingual immigrant staff underwent intensive training for three months both on lending and on the communities they were going to serve. The new loan officers learned about mortgage banking, the secondary market, various types of mortgages and lenders, escrowing, mortgage insurance, and underwriting guidelines. This intensive programme was followed by about three years of weekly mortgage sales and loan processing meetings before they were perceived as an authority both internally within the institution and externally in the community. Even in communities with concentrations of one or two immigrant groups, training bilingual staff as mortgage professionals requires considerable time and effort on the part of financial institutions and their partners. To provide services to low-income immigrants, financial institutions develop ways to assess the creditworthiness of workers who are often paid partially or
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completely in cash by employers who don’t report tax information to the government. The first item a mortgage loan officer asks a prospective homebuyer for is evidence of earnings, which for most Americans is provided by employers to them and to the US government on an Internal Revenue Service form, the W-2 Wage and Tax Statement. Immigrants often cannot produce such documentation of earnings, yet they may have adequate income to qualify for a mortgage loan. Innovative institutions have changed their approaches – not in terms of credit-risk assessment – but in terms of documentation of earnings and credit history. A letter from the employer or a Verification of Employment can substitute for the W-2. Credit card histories may not exist, but it is possible to verify payment of rent, utilities, telephone and cable TV service – regular payments that can be used to demonstrate creditworthiness. But financial institutions have to change internally – both in mindset and in practice – to assess the real eligibility of many immigrants for mortgage loans. Immigrants themselves can overcome certain knowledge barriers through financial literacy as well as homeownership education and counselling programmes. The literacy programmes help immigrants understand the American banking system and the importance of budgeting and saving, while homeownership education focuses on the US home buying system. Counselling is often critical, as it helps individual immigrant families understand the benefits and requirements of becoming a sustainable homeowner. These programmes are often offered through bank partnerships with community organizations or sometimes employers. Taking out a mortgage loan, however, may adversely impact some immigrants. First, immigrants are sometimes taken advantage of because of their lack of knowledge regarding mortgages. Some cultural brokers steer immigrants to more costly loans that are hard to maintain. Second, as with natives, some immigrants may become homeowners before they are prepared to take on the responsibility of regular monthly payments. One of the roles of homeownership counselling is to identify readiness for homeownership and steps that need to be taken before homeownership can be sustainable. Defaults on mortgage loans have significant immediate and longer-term negative consequences for homebuyers. Partnerships are a key component in enabling immigrants to become sustainable homeowners. The homeownership process is a complicated one for everyone; homeownership education makes it understandable. Immigrants often have had little experience with the institutions involved in the homeownership process. This lack of contact means that a trust needs to be built between immigrants and financial institutions. Civil society is front and centre in building that trust. Partnerships with community-based organizations (CBOs) that serve immigrant communities help financial institutions build bridges to new Americans through outreach and education. CBOs bring to the table the personnel, resources, and community trust needed to deliver homeownership education directly to immigrants. They work with particular financial institutions to ensure the availability of affordable
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mortgage products for their immigrant clients. Through individual counseling, CBOs ensure that an immigrant family is ready to take on the responsibilities of homeownership. In order to ensure good quality homeownership education and counselling, public-private partnerships have created non-profit training and continuing education organizations, such as the Homeownership Center that serves lowand moderate-income families in St Paul and Minneapolis (the Twin cities). Through a competitive process, the Center contracts CBOs to provide homeownership education classes and counseling to communities throughout the Twin Cities area. The Center also provides training and continuing education to a network of area CBO staff and counsellors, giving them the tools and resources to deliver consistent, high-quality education, loan counselling, and support for potential and new home buyers. Funding, as well as board management, comes from both public and private sources: lenders, municipalities, the state housing finance agency, the state and national association of realtors, and foundations. It is also civil society that has productively encouraged financial institutions and other housing industry actors to serve immigrant communities. CBOs are often the ones who bring the barriers to immigrant homeownership to the attention of financial institutions. They are often instrumental in the qualifying process itself. For example, Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE), a housing counselling agency in the New York City metropolitan area, serves clients who need to pursue homeownership as a solution to their housing needs, but often lack documentation and traditional credit histories. For those clients who receive some portion of their income off the books, AAFE works with employers to complete a Verification of Employment for the borrower. AAFE has negotiated this programme feature with several lenders who otherwise would not be in a position to lend to these immigrants.40 The significant role of civil society in the integration of immigrants with respect to housing continues a long history of non-profit social work in America. It is civil society, not government, which plays a key role facilitating the integration of immigrants in America. Finally, companies that employ large numbers of immigrants can play a facilitating role in the homeownership process for immigrants. In turn, they can benefit from greater worker loyalty. Workers who own homes have more stable home lives and are less likely to move.41 The best opportunities for employers to facilitate financial literacy and homeownership education are at the workplace, as the Rogers case study shows. Large employers have also found ways to introduce immigrants to the US credit system through automated salary payments into savings or chequing accounts and by bringing financial services directly to the workplace.42
Conclusion Sustainable homeownership is an indicator of immigrant integration into US society. Achieving the American dream of homeownership is a very high priority
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for immigrants, but simply taking out a mortgage loan is not necessarily a sign of integration. For homeownership to be sustainable and true integration to occur requires immigrants to understand the US credit system and the complicated mortgage process. Many have overcome significant barriers – financial, cultural, and linguistic – to take on and handle the responsibilities of mortgage loans. As financial institutions prepare themselves to meet the homeownership needs of immigrants, they will enable significant numbers of immigrants to improve their quality of life and their economic future. When immigrants become homeowners, they often leave behind overcrowded rental housing, poorly financed urban public schools, and neighbourhoods where safety is at times an issue. The benefits of sustainable homeownership go not only to immigrant families, but also to their communities, employers, financial institutions and other housing industry actors. For some immigrants, homeownership turns out to be problematic. This is often the case when they have relied on cultural brokers who take advantage of the immigrants’ lack of knowledge and trust in order to sell a property at an exorbitant price and make a mortgage loan at above-market interest rates. Some mainstream financial institutions have started to find innovative ways that enable immigrants in the US to navigate the complex world of homeownership. This involves both significant internal institutional change and partnering with community-based organizations. Many financial institutions have yet to adapt these good practices to their markets and are just now realizing why they should and how they can. If such practices are successfully mainstreamed over the next twenty years, this will likely result in sustainable homeownership for millions of immigrant families in the United States and a closing of the homeownership rate gap between natives and the foreign born. In such a case, homeownership will be a major expression both of how immigrants become Americans and how American institutions adapt to its newcomers.
Notes 1 The author would like to thank Micah Bump, ISIM Research Associate, for preparing the figures for this chapter, and Justin Brown, ISIM Research Assistant, for his help in researching many issues discussed in this chapter. 2 Dianne Schmidley, ‘The Foreign-Born Population in the United States: March 2002’, US Census Bureau: Current Population Reports, February 2003, Fig. 2, p. 2. 3 Michael H. Schill, Samantha Friedman and Emily Rosenbaum, ‘The Housing Conditions of Immigrants in New York City’, Journal of Housing Research, Volume 9, Issue 2, Fannie Mae Foundation, 1998, p. 226. 4 Christopher J. Mayer, ‘Does location matter? Special Issue: Earnings Inequality’, New England Economic Review, May 1996, p. 31. 5 Ibid. p. 35. 6 Schmidley, op. cit., p. 6. 7 US Census Bureau, ‘Total Money Earnings of Year-Round Full-Time Workers by Sex and Citizenship Status: March 2002’, Current Population Survey, March 2002. 8 Edward A. Fieldhouse, ‘Ethnic Minority Unemployment and Spatial Mismatch: The Case of London’, Urban Studies, Vol. 36, No. 9, 1 August 1999.
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9 Anita I. Drever and William A. V. Clark, ‘Gaining access to housing in Germany: the foreign-minority experience’, Urban Studies, Vol. 39, No. 13, 2446. 10 Sylvia Poggioli, ‘All Things Considered’, National Public Radio, 26 February 2003; Bruce Crumley and Adam Smith, ‘Sisters in Hell; Sexual assault is rampant in France’s crumbling housing projects. Now a gang-rape victim has broken the silence. Will society confront the crisis?’, Time International, 2 December 2002. 11 William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, p. 150. 12 Joint Center for Housing Studies, The State of the Nation’s Housing 2003, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2003, p. 6. 13 Consumer Federation of America, ‘Study Concludes That Homeownership is the Main Path to Wealth for Lower Income and Minority Americans’, 16 December 2003, p. 2. 14 Ibid., p. 1. 15 J. Michael Collins, Changing Lives, Changing Communities Through Home Ownership: Showing the Need for Homebuyer Services in Utah, Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah: Salt Lake Neighborhood Housing Services Inc. & Neighborhood Housing Services of Provo Inc., 1999, p. 6. 16 Center for Housing Policy, America’s Newest Working Families: Costs, Crowding and Conditions for Immigrants, Washington DC: National Housing Conference, July 2003. 17 Ibid. 18 Mitchell S. Ratner, ‘Many Routes to Homeownership: A Four-Site Ethnographic Study of Minority and Immigrant Experiences’, Housing Policy Debate, Vol. 7, Issue 1, Fannie Mae Foundation, 1996, p. 118. 19 US Depts Of Commerce and Housing and Urban Development, American Housing Survey for the United States: 2001, October 2002, Table 2–1, 42. 20 Collins, op. cit., p. 2. 21 Ibid., p. 2. 22 Joint Center for Housing Studies, op. cit., pp. 10 and 14. 23 Collins, op. cit., p. 9. 24 H. Jane Lehman, ‘Survey Shows Urge To Own Home Is Strong Among New Immigrants’, The Washington Post, 17 June 1995, p. F3. 25 See Figure 12.6 and US Census Bureau, Coming to America: A Profile of the Nation’s Foreign Born (2000 Update), February 2002, p. 4. 26 US Department of Homeland Security, 2002 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: Naturalizations, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2003, Table 34. 27 Mitchell S. Ratner, op. cit. This excellent article documents many of the barriers immigrants face in becoming sustainable homeowners. 28 Chuck Oxley, ‘Immigrants Squandering Pay on Check Fees, Wiring Charges’, The Associated Press State & Local Wire, 7 August 2003. 29 Ibid. 30 Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser Family Foundation, Chart 29, ‘Reported Use of Credit Cards, Bank Accounts, and Homeownership’, 2002 National Survey of Latinos, December 2002. 31 Mitchell S. Ratner, op. cit., pp. 126 and 140. 32 Ibid., pp. 122–123. 33 Income increases the longer an immigrant lives and works in the US Income also differs by legal status. Naturalized citizens tend to have the highest household income, surpassing natives. Institute for the Study of International Migration, Georgetown University, Financial Institutions and Immigrant Homeownership: Proceedings of Roundtable on Best Practices, Fannie Mae Foundation, 17 July 1998, 14–15. 34 Andrew I. Schoenholtz and Kristin Stanton, Reaching the Immigrant Market: Creating Homeownership Opportunities for New Americans, Washington, DC: Georgetown University and Fannie Mae Foundation, 2001.
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35 The author, together with Kristin Stanton, performed the field research for this case study in Rogers in 1999. 36 Ibid. The recommended practices are all discussed in detail in this publication. 37 Ibid. 38 Jim Kvicala, ‘Buying Power of US Minority Households Increasing Faster Than White Households, According to University of Georgia’s Selig Center’, Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, 14 August 2003. 39 Schoenholtz and Stanton, op. cit., pp. 19–20. 40 Ibid., p. 46. 41 Collins, op. cit., p. 2. 42 Testimony of Sheila Bair, Dean’s Professor of Financial Regulatory Policy, University of Massachusetts, ‘Hearing on Initiatives to Broaden Access to the Financial Mainstream’, US House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, 26 June 2003.
13 Digestible Difference: Food, Ethnicity and Spatial Claims in the City Susan M. Thompson
Entrée: Introduction Migration has significant and far-reaching impacts on the physical, economic and social landscapes of a nation. These impacts engender different levels of acceptance and rejection as a community negotiates the fundamental changes which migration brings. Inevitably there is a level of discomfort as the host society is confronted with new ways of life, which are initially unknown and unfamiliar, often viewed as suspicious, and frequently misunderstood. Nevertheless, some aspects of difference are perceived as less challenging to the status quo than others. Food is one such signifier of cultural diversity. At the centre of a cosmopolitan lifestyle, the availability of exotic and varied cuisines is, for many, the most palatable and digestible form of multiculturalism. Not only does the establishment of ‘ethnic’ restaurants contribute to the development of a multicultural city, food is a mode of cultural expression in which everyone can participate. It can be argued that interesting and unusual foods enrich and enliven existences which are otherwise mono-cultural, unadventurous and boring. Accordingly, this aspect of migration is an asset, but only to the extent to which it reduces the threat of other more challenging expressions of difference and diversity. Indeed, food has been described as the thin edge of the multicultural wedge. In this Chapter I engage with food and eating as key expressions of multicultural diversity. My focus is the way in which multicultural cuisines claim space, both at home and within the broader public arena. The role of food as a source of cultural expression, enabling the maintenance of a sense of identity and belonging, sets the context. Drawing principally on examples from Sydney, Australia’s most populous and multicultural city, public spaces are discussed in relation to the ethnic restaurant and local food store.1 In particular, the tensions found in these eating sites are interrogated. Do such spaces create belonging (both socially and economically) for migrant groups? Or are they more about ascribing and maintaining difference, existing for the enrichment of the cosmopolitan consumer desiring an authentic ‘ethnic’ taste? How much does food and eating merely mask the threat of other expressions of cultural difference and expression, affording a degree of comfort in an otherwise tense and
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conflict-ridden environment? To what extent do the food habits of immigrants make life difficult for them and disrupt their ‘integration’ into a new community? Various private and semi-private spaces are subsequently explored in relation to food as a mode of cultural expression, belonging and celebration. This can take several forms including cooking traditional dishes and entertaining in culturally appropriate ways. Familiar and comforting food smells bring back memories of homes left long ago. While generally unproblematic when contained within a particular space, tensions can emerge if those smells threaten a neighbour hostile to what he or she considers unusual and/or unpalatable. Even within migrant families, arguments are possible across the generations if the consumption of traditional food is seen as an embarrassment or perhaps a refusal to adopt new and modern ways. However, bringing someone home to share in food preparation and a delicious meal can be a positive experience, smoothing the way for intercultural dialogue and the possibility of understanding. Other sites, such as community gardens, encourage cultural interaction around the cultivation of different produce for special recipes and favourite dishes. In the final part of the Chapter, I pause to reflect on the notion of the ‘temporal’ food space, both real and virtual, as a place for cultural interaction. The food festival and the ‘ethnic’ cooking television programme are two such sites. Again, there are questions around the opportunities afforded and the challenges presented. Ultimately, I argue that cultural cuisine opens up different spaces for exchange and understanding in a non-threatening way. This is the case for both the immigrant communities who prepare and share the multicultural dish, and for those in the host society who willingly and openly come to the table.
The Sociology of Food and Eating Food plays an inextricable role in our daily lives. Without food we cannot survive. But food is much more than a tool of survival. Food is a source of pleasure, comfort, security. Food is also a symbol of hospitality, social status, and has ritual significance. What we select to eat, how we prepare it, serve it, and even how we eat it, are all factors deeply touched by our individual cultural inheritance. (Barer-Stein, 1979: vii) Until recently, the importance of food and eating to both survival and social relationships was perceived to be so obvious that it was taken for granted. Although anthropologists have traditionally taken an interest in consumptive behaviour, mainstream sociological inquiry in this area had been virtually nonexistent. This absence was also related to the association of food with women and the domestic sphere (Mennell et al., 1992: 1). But today the situation is different, with academic inquiry in food and eating burgeoning (Bell and Valentine, 1997: 7). Research studies can be found in the technical disciplines examining health and nutrition, food science and catering. Changes in food preferences, cooking
Digestible Difference 219 and eating habits are recounted in historical studies (see for example Mennell, 1996 and Dixon, 2002). Psychology has provided insights into the changing attitudes to food, focusing on eating problems from different points of view (Bell and Valentine, 1997: 7; Smith, 2002). While food can bring feelings of comfort, pleasure and security, it can engender guilt, panic and revulsion in societies where the control of one’s appetite is constantly craved in the desire for body weight reduction. There is no doubt that food plays a central role in everyone’s lives. Meal times structure our days. Sharing food with others is at the heart of hospitality and an important way of sustaining relationships with friends and family. Feasting and celebration mark significant communal and individual events. On these occasions, food is used symbolically and to demonstrate social status. Cultural inheritance influences what food is selected for consumption, as well as how the ingredients are cooked, served and eaten (Barer-Stein, 1979: vii). Sociological studies have opened up understandings about the role of food in society and impact on class structures and gender roles. Patterns of food consumption, beliefs and practices around eating and fasting, as well as public and private dining, are all rich sources of sociological inquiry (Mennell et al., 1992). So too the links between food, the continuation of cultural identity across space and the ways in which this can unsettle established food retailing and communal eating patterns.
Claiming Space in the Public Sphere: The Role of Food in Creating Multicultural Eating Creating Spaces of Belonging? … food habits are seen as a fundamental way of shoring up a sense of (usually ethnic) community identity … . (Bell and Valentine, 1997: 15) It is well documented that when people migrate they take their food, cooking methods and eating habits with them (Mennell et al., 1992: 79). This is the most immediate way of connecting with one’s cultural heritage, ensuring that key traditions, all of which focus on food, are maintained, and national identity expressed (Bell and Valentine, 1997: 18). The continuation of customs also brings with it the need to establish food premises. Migrant communities can then purchase the ingredients necessary for their special dishes, as well as talk with compatriots and start to feel a sense of belonging in their newly adopted land. This is an important aspect of home making as migrants re-create practices through familiar recipes, tastes and smells. It is not however, a nostalgic desire to return, but rather a way of strengthening and building a sense of belonging in an otherwise alien environment (Hage, 1997: 101). Over time the new becomes more comfortable as it is fused with the old and familiar, and increasingly the migrant feels at home in his/her adopted country.
220 Personal and Economic Security These processes are evident in the way in which the Greek community settled in Sydney. When they first arrived in the 1950s, they established corner food stores in the inner suburb of Marrickville (Armstrong, 1994: 109). Gradually, the availability of different Greek food became commonplace with many shops, including supermarkets, carrying specialist goods. As an older Greek woman who migrated to Sydney in the 1960s, commented: … years ago you’d have to exclusively go to a Greek delicatessen to get certain things. Now it’s different. You can get all your various continental meats … pastas and sauces, at all supermarkets. Food trends have changed … We don’t have to exclusively go to a Greek shop now to get either feta cheese or olives, you can get them anywhere ….2 Similar patterns can be found in Sydney’s Vietnamese community. On first arriving, the community set up informal cafés in domestic garages selling ‘pho’, a popular soup. Today, this speciality is widely available as are the many ingredients needed to make this and other familiar dishes (Savill, 2002: 10). As Angie Hong, who started one of Sydney’s first Vietnamese restaurants, declared, ‘Australia is growing everything now … when I first came you couldn’t even buy fresh ginger’ (Savill, 2002: 10). In establishing familiar food spaces for themselves, migrants forged a strong sense of their own cultural and social identity. Food was the vehicle through which they expressed communal solidarity and togetherness (Beardsworth and Keil, 1997: 101). They also built up an array of small businesses (Collins et al., 1995). However the host society did not always view such ventures favourably.3 Similarly, different ways of food preparation, storage and serving could be considered at odds with local health regulations.4 These expressions of culture,
Figure 13.1 Ethnic Food Store: Asian Mixed Business in Sydney’s Inner West
Digestible Difference 221 business acumen and regulatory discrepancies were often taken by the host as a threat. For them the familiar reality and way of life, which defined their existence, was ‘… disappearing from underneath [their] feet’ (Hage in Clark, 1998: 11). Nevertheless, over the last 30 years, cultural cuisine has blossomed and transformed the nature of food and eating in many world cities. The cosmopolitan nature of Sydney’s contemporary dining and food scene is one such example. Its diverse range of restaurants and food stores selling dishes and ingredients from across the globe is a reflection of its multicultural diversity. For some people this is an important indicator of acceptance and racial tolerance. But not universally so, with critics decrying the superficial way in which food can be used to define the extent of a multicultural society. Drawing on examples from Sydney as a global city, I consider both the positive and negative ways in which ethnic food and eating have touched the lives of its inhabitants. Creating a Palatable Form of Difference? Oh Sydney we love you. We really do … We love the diversity, the energy, the sheer audacity of your cooks, your restaurateurs, your wine list and your designers. (Evans and Hudson, 2002: iv) Sydney is often described as a gastronomic delight, boasting a myriad of cultural cuisines for all to enjoy. This potpourri of eateries is set against the irony of Australia not having its own national food (Bell and Valentine, 1997: 178). Indeed, it can be asserted that this absence has fuelled the adoption of multicultural eating. From the elite restaurant to the everyday café, these establishments are largely defined by their principal cultural cuisine. Even though ethnic food is not its prime concern, the Good Food Guide, which lists Sydney’s most prestigious and expensive restaurants, categorises each of the 400 recommended dining places by nationality (Evans and Hudson, 2002: iv). Other directories specifically focus on ethnic diversity. The changes in availability of culturally diverse food, as well as transformations in the type of dishes on the menu, are mapped through seven editions of one such guide (O’Meara and Savill, 2002). While the emphasis in another is broader than food and eating, it nevertheless, provides a rich glossary of Sydney’s ethnic cafés and restaurants. The reader is invited to ‘explore the world in one city’, with the book claiming that ‘Sydney’s cultural diversity shapes the sights, smell, tastes and sounds of daily life … in a profound way’ (Collins and Castillo, 1998: 1).5 The authors believe that this will surprise many a visitor prepared for the physical beauty of Sydney, but taken aback by its cosmopolitan character (Collins and Castillo, 1998: 1). As well as the frequently updated books on where and what to eat, there are shopping directories for those who want to buy and cook specialist ingredients
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(for example, Greenwood and Newton, 2002). There is a constant stream of restaurant reviews and food information in the major daily newspapers. These include one-off reviews of individual establishments (for example, Dennis, 2003), overviews of ethnic eating across the city (for example, Savill, 2002) and exposés of different suburban districts where a particular cultural cuisine is available (Savill, 2003; Dennis, 2001). The emphasis is often on authenticity and the way in which Sydney increasingly caters to the discerning consumer anxious to get away from the stereotypical ‘Chinatowns’. Even ‘Little Italies’ vie to be the most sought after and authentic Italian food locale (Dennis, 2001: 10). Guides to culturally diverse eating opportunities are important tools in the marketing of cosmopolitan cities throughout the world. This has become a serious business and for some critics, a worrying trend. Cultural diversity is lauded for the economic riches it can bring to a neighbourhood, but condemned if there are tensions between community groups as spatial claims spill outside the culinary area. This is where we begin to see beneath the surface allure of the multicultural experience. For some ethnic communities this equates with a cynical exploitation of cultural difference at the expense of deeper levels of acceptance and inclusion. As one migrant woman said: Well, the people are in danger of being not recognised for their diversity or their needs or their contributions. I wouldn’t like to see only … cooking classes and dancing and the council calling us around to be dancing bears at the time of the … Multicultural Festival, food and dance, and we become really only performers … .6 The existence of different ethnic restaurants and food stores can represent the extent of a narrowly defined multiculturalism: a multiculturalism where immigrants are seen ‘as a happy source of interesting food’ (Clark, 1998: 11). The culturally diverse food space, in its various guises, is the only acceptable form of difference. The local Thai or Chinese café does not represent a threat, whereas other expressions of difference are unacceptable, particularly when they suggest a shift of power in the host society and a granting of rights to new citizens (Dunn et al., 2001). … for most people to be multicultural … that means to accept the food of another country … to have [a] thousand restaurants from different countries … I think that is not multicultural. Multiculturalism is … not just food. Multiculturalism is a lot of things. It is a very big term. How they think, how they live, how they speak … the language and which education they have. That is not just food … .7 Creating Cosmopolitan Landscapes? Marketing ethnic diversity centres on the celebratory aspects of multiculturalism – the food shops, restaurants and cafés, the cultural festivals, artistic endeavours
Digestible Difference 223 and street fairs. Promotional logos are an important way of advertising a locality to attract visitors. Fairfield City Council, in Sydney’s outer west, and the most culturally diverse local government area in Australia, ‘Celebrates Diversity’. Canterbury, also in the west, has as its slogan, ‘City of Diversity’. Both councils actively encourage different food uses and promote their culturally diverse eating possibilities in a variety of ways. Fairfield has published a CD to accompany a map which guides visitors through the area (Migration Heritage Centre NSW and Fairfield City Council, no date). The tour highlights the many spectacular places of public worship, but also locates different dining experiences. This is augmented on the Council’s website, especially in relation to the famous Asianised suburb of Cabramatta (see Figure 13.2). For lovers of Asian food, Cabramatta is not so much a day trip as a pilgrimage. Here, among more than 60 eateries, are the authentic cuisines of Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, plus several regional Chinese styles. (Fairfield City Council, 2003) While it cannot be assumed that these seemingly inclusive slogans necessarily permeate council policies and practices, both Canterbury and Fairfield are developing innovative, inter-disciplinary, well-funded and significant projects that address cultural diversity as part of their main-stream town planning activity
Figure 13.2 Cultural Area in Cabramatta: Gates at the Cabramatta Mall
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(Thompson, 2003). This is also the case with Marrickville, an inner city locality where the planners are working to establish their area as a regular tourist destination. … a lot of overseas visitors are not looking for the big ticket tourist attractions per se. They want real life experiences, they want the local experience and that’s where the opportunity and the growth market can occur. (Connell, personal communication, 2002) Food tours and cooking classes are also popular. Gourmet Safaris is a Sydney firm which offers an array of tours through suburbs identified with a particular cultural group. One can visit Cabramatta, where following a ‘fabulous Vietnamese banquet lunch … [an] insider’s view on the best Vietnamese noodles, rice paper and sauces …’ awaits. The tour of inner city Marrickville takes the visitor ‘behind closed doors … [to] discover some great flavours …’ (Gourmet Safaris, 2002). The theme is one of authenticity and being privy to restaurant kitchens and food preparations not usually on public display. Nilgiri’s on Sydney’s North Shore, provides cooking classes as an accompaniment to its fine dining and food merchandising (Nilgiri’s, 2003). I recently attended the seafood class which combined culinary instruction with Indian geography, history and philosophy. Feeding Off the Riches of Cultural Diversity: Creating a Parasitic Culture? Despite the glossy brochures and deliciously persuasive text, the marketing of cosmopolitan landscapes is not without its detractors. Nor can it simply be viewed as a straightforward act of cultural inclusion. At best, it has been likened to constraining multiculturalism to the acceptable and non-threatening (Castles et al., 1988), and at worst, a cynical exploitation of difference for economic gain. The ironies of this are illustrated spatially when one considers geographic ethnic concentrations. Ethnic eating enclaves are celebrated and marketed as Little Italies, Koreas and Chinatowns, whereas other ethnic aggregations are criticised and opposed. This is especially so in precincts where foreign language signage dominates, goods spill out on to the footpaths, unfamiliar food smells waft through the air and English is rarely spoken. Older Anglo Australian residents of a southern suburb of Sydney were antagonistic to the changed landscape of their shopping centre and felt threatened by the growth in Asian businesses. I was in the shop one day and there were some Asian women in there speaking away in their language. And I wanted to tell them to shut up. I mean we speak English. (Older Anglo Australian woman quoted in Dewick, 1999)
Digestible Difference 225 Well they don’t call it little Hong Kong for nothing. I don’t mind it too much. I mean this strip was dead before they came along. As long as they keep the stuff from spilling onto the streets then it’s fine. (Middle aged Anglo Australian man quoted in Dewick, 1999) Even more threatening are those areas where places of non-Christian worship are established; where church bells are being replaced by the Muslims’ call to prayer. As Horin, a well respected Sydney journalist and social rights commentator, cogently states: Ethnic religious groups are damned if they stick together in the ghetto, and damned if they leave it. Bigots condemn them for creating Little Lebanons or Little Vietnams, but when they move and want to build temples, shrines and prayer houses outside the ghetto, closer to home, it’s a case of Not In My Backyard. (Horin, 2002: 25)8 Cultural theorists have largely condemned the marketing of different food and eating places, suggesting that it reduces ethnicity to a ‘… seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture’ (hooks, 1992: 21). Within this conceptualisation, ‘… whiteness is … a “state of incompleteness” that needs to be supplemented by ethnic difference. By eating the other, whites can then add
Figure 13.3 Non-Christian Religious Buildings in Sydney’s West: Gallipoli Mosque, Auburn – the Heart of Sydney’s Turkish Community.
226 Personal and Economic Security colour, so to speak, to their/our existence’ (Probyn, 2000: 81). The white consumer becomes a cannibal, devouring difference and through this process, destroying the ‘very difference’ that is craved (Probyn, 2000: 82). A similar argument is proposed by Hage who is critical of the way in which middle class Australians, representing the dominant culture, ‘feed off ’ the minority for their own benefit and pleasure. Multiculturalism is cynically reduced to how many ethnic restaurants line the streets and the satiation of the demanding palate, desirous of adventure and sophistication. Cultural difference is tolerated, in fact celebrated, but only as an enrichment of the majority (Hage, 1998). These theoretical critiques are, however, challenged by a recent and comprehensive national survey (Ang et al., 2002). The researchers examined attitudes to different aspects of cultural diversity and found widespread participation in the consumption of ethnic food. Although there is more involvement by Anglo Australians than those from non-English speaking backgrounds, the children of migrants consume foods from different cultures much more than their parents. The researchers concluded that ‘… there is a growing recognition of the social and cultural importance of food in creating cultural meaning, social bonds and senses of personal identity’ (Ang et al., 2002: 30). One interviewee commented that the consuming of food from a different culture is the ‘… first step to experiencing different cultures’ (p. 32). Accordingly, the ‘… growing acceptance of culinary diversity should not be simply dismissed as superficial; it may in fact operate as a cultural lever towards a more comprehensive acceptance of the heterogeneity of Australian culture and society’ (Ang et al., 2002: 32). In my work on women migrants and home, I found that food was used as an initiator of friendship, as well as a way of introducing Anglo Australians to different cultural traditions (Thompson, 1996). One Vietnamese woman put it this way: [It is] even easy to make friends by recommending food … Even some of my Australian colleagues and friends, they enjoy my cooking … they want to learn how to cook in [the] Vietnamese way. (Thompson, 1996: 357) As a white, non-migrant researcher, I participated in this cultural exchange. Not only was I given information about different food and its links to culture and special celebrations, I was invited to taste Greek biscuits and savoury pastries, Arabic sweets and coffee, Vietnamese spring rolls and noodle soup. And when the interview was at an end, I left with bottles of preserved tomatoes, homegrown and salted olives, dried herbs and semolina flour. Recipes and cooking instructions accompanied the women’s generous gifts so that I could prepare their special dishes in my own home. Mixing a Cultural Blend? Following immigration the food patterns of different nationalities become diffuse. (Wood, 1977: xii)
Digestible Difference 227 Another indicator of changing attitudes to cultural diversity is the way in which different food traditions are being blended and transformed into a new culinary identity. Anthropologist Josephine Smart’s work on Chinese cuisine in Canada is a fascinating example here. ‘Ginger Beef ’, created by a local chef in Calgary, Alberta, has become a symbol of the Chinese community in that region and an entrée to cultural interaction. Despite being made for the Anglo customers, ‘Ginger Beef ’ has become popular with younger Chinese diners (Smart, 2001). Similarly, in England, the resident Indian community has created the ‘Balti’ dish, as a way of preparing and serving Indian food for the local palate. Based on culinary traditions from Islamabad, Bangla and the Indus Valleys, the food served in Britain is different in that it is cooked and served in the same pot (Café Bangla, 2001). In Australia there has been a rejection of the food of the past and an assertion of nationality through multicultural cuisines (Mennell, 1996: 345). The European/Asian mix has become entrenched, with one of the nation’s top restaurants, Tetsuya’s, built on a blend of Japanese and French cooking (Evans and Hudson, 2002: 137). This cultural fusion is evident across the culinary landscape with the ‘consumption of exotic food … an interesting marker of cultural “hybridization”’ (Ang et al., 2002: 30). Migrants are also proud of the contribution that they have made to the development of a sophisticated and multicultural Australian cuisine. I’m very proud of having an ethnic background … I think the ethnics have done so much for this country … I mean [if] us ethnics didn’t come out or migrate to Australia, I think Australia would be nothing. You wouldn’t have these restaurants, you wouldn’t have the fashion, you wouldn’t have food – all the mixture. I mean what would you be eating – meat pies and sausage rolls all day?9 Culinary change occurs in other ways and for different motivations. Traditional modes of food preparation and cooking are shunned for what is perceived to be a healthier way of eating. Complicated and time-consuming recipes, even though they are steeped in tradition, can be difficult to prepare when time is scarce. The boundaries between different types of cuisine are blurred as new ways of cooking, serving and eating emerge.
Claiming Space in the Private Sphere: The Role of Food in Cultural Connection and Continuation I now turn to look at the private sphere, both indoor and outdoor, and the ways in which food has been used by migrants. In this context, food and culturally appropriate eating are an asset. Food facilitates cultural connection and continuation. It involves individuals and their communities in an easy and immediate way. Food is something that is known and familiar – the smells, the tastes and the textures, as well as the rituals of preparation and serving. It creates a sense of
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belonging and helps to make one feel at home (Hage, 1997: 99). Confined in this private setting, food and eating constitute little threat to the host society, but as I will show, there are instances where this does occur. There can even be a threat within the migrant community itself as a younger generation sometimes rejects the old in favour of new ways. Creating a Cultural Connection at Home: The Internal Domestic Sphere For migrant women, traditional food preparation and consumption practices can be an important means of cultural continuation. I discovered this when I interviewed women from the Arabic, Greek and Vietnamese communities about their meanings of home. In a series of in-depth and moving discussions, the women spoke about the ways in which they celebrate their culture and the mechanisms they use to maintain it. Food is central in linking the past with the present. Together with language, it is a thread of connection in a sea of change and unfamiliarity (Thompson, 1994; 1996). As two women commented: Greek cooking comes in because you were brought up with all the Greek cooking … that comes to you naturally … I like to keep it up … (A Greek Australian woman in Thompson, 1996: 203) … eating also makes you have a feel of the culture – a sense of belonging. (A Vietnamese Australian woman in Thompson, 1996: 356) The sensuality of food helped to smooth the women’s transition. Smells in particular, create a home that feels familiar, intimate and special. And you can too tell it’s a Lebanese house too because of the food smell {laughter} … (A Muslim Arabic Australian woman in Thompson, 1996: 271) Traditional food also has a role in keeping the family together. This was not only related to the types of dishes prepared, but extended to the rituals surrounding their placement and order on the menu. In some homes, entertaining is very structured, with special foods served in a particular sequence. As one woman with Greek heritage explained: … you bring that [sugared sultanas] out first with maybe a glass of water, it’s very sweet and maybe liqueur or something like that and [then] the coffee comes. It’s very formal, the Greek way of entertaining … (Thompson, 1996: 209) Even on an everyday basis, customs were maintained. Some Arabic women, for example, continue the tradition of eating the main meal at lunchtime, despite
Digestible Difference 229 the structural difficulties encountered with the typical Western daily schedule. Special arrangements are made for children who delay eating their lunch until returning home from school mid-afternoon (Thompson, 1996: 270). Nevertheless, on occasions, cooking Asian and Middle Eastern food for their families created tensions as the private impinged on the public. Aromas wafting from one apartment to another were sometimes unwelcomed. The house on its own block of land, physically separated from its neighbour, was for these women, a more liberating mode of accommodation. No longer was there embarrassment about cooking smells or other practices which differed from those of an Anglo neighbour (Thompson, 1994; 1996). Unlike their parents who used traditional food to create a sense of belonging, the younger generation spoke about this threatening their integration into a new community. There was a desperate longing to fit in with their classmates and as much as possible, different food customs were confined to the private sphere of home. In the schoolyard and in the company of their peers, difference was shunned and every attempt made to be like an ‘Aussie’. One young Greek woman recounted how she adapted her taste buds so she could stomach a meat pie, the quintessential symbol of Anglo-Australian cuisine in the 1950s and ’60s. It was just … the lunches … that I remember as a little kid … trying to get used to eating a meat pie … I had to train myself to like it … because I wanted to feel part of the group … (Thompson, 1996: 181) For these young women, food was a liability within a milieu of intolerance for public displays of difference. Along with their olive skin and dark hair, the food they ate and the language they spoke became markers of difference, challenging the status quo. It was safe to display these things within the private sphere of home, but in public they became problematic and threatening for the white skinned Anglo Australian. This often caused family conflict as the young railed against any displays of difference over which they could exercise control. The home became a source of embarrassment, especially when different food was served to an unresponsive and judgemental friend. I remember Julie coming to my place for dinner one night … Mum had Greek food and she had … a Greek salad … in those days we weren’t very multicultural, were we? And I remember seeing Julie’s face …, ‘Oh what’s this?’. I’ll never forget that expression … the way she looked at it … (A young Greek Australian woman in Thompson, 1996: 181) Creating a Cultural Connection at Home: The External Domestic Sphere As well as the internal, domestic space, the garden surrounding the home was, and is, an important site for creating a sense of belonging. Food is at the
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centre of the garden, which provides a source of culturally familiar vegetables, fruits and herbs for traditional recipes. Ornamental plants and their accompanying aromas also link the home of origin with the new. A bountiful harvest of homegrown produce is a catalyst for sharing and comparing cultivation techniques, as well as different vegetables and ways of preparing and cooking them. Gardens are a non-threatening display of difference, confined behind a fence and usually located at the rear of the house. For many migrants it is the backyard where ‘the process of becoming settled happens and a sense of belonging develops’ (Gleeson et al., 2001: 6). For new settlers to Sydney who arrived soon after the Second World War, their garden was the only means that they had of sourcing the necessary ingredients for the dishes they knew and loved. These spaces also served as a way of re-creating the smells and outdoor colours with which the new communities were familiar. I encountered this with the migrant women who spoke about the importance of the garden in bringing the familiar into their new life in Australia. A Vietnamese woman said: My back yard looks like the back yard in Vietnam … with flowers … paw paw … sugar cane … and bananas. (Thompson, 1996: 374) Today these gardening traditions continue, even though fresh produce and exotic ornamental species are widely commercially available. In Marrickville, one of Sydney’s culturally heterogeneous suburbs, backyards are filled with a variety of different plants symbolising the owner’s heritage and tradition (Gleeson et al., 2001). A Chinese couple fills their backyard with fruit trees, medicinal herbs and fragrant plants such as jasmine. A Middle Eastern family is reminded of their home in Lebanon by the layout of their garden and the varieties of plants grown. So too households originally from Greece, Portugal, Tonga, Egypt and Indonesia (Gleeson et al., 2001). The community garden provides further opportunities for cultural belonging in an open space setting. The potential for cross-cultural sharing and co-operation are greater in this semi-private space when compared to the private backyard (Bell and Valentine, 1997: 15). For those living in medium and high-density housing, community gardens offer the chance to have an outdoor area in which to grow plants and enjoy gardening activities. In Sydney there are a range of community gardens, including some in public housing estates. The Waterloo Housing Estate in the inner west of the city is one such example. Located amidst the multi-storey apartment blocks on this site, community gardens now provide an opportunity for tenants to participate in a pleasant activity away from the confines of their apartments. Not only does this benefit the individuals directly involved, it has a positive impact on all residents of the Estate (Bartolomei et al., 2003). The gardeners come from a variety of cultural backgrounds and typically grow vegetables, fruit, herbs and ornamental plants.
Digestible Difference 231 Working side-by-side in their individual plots, they have become friends, comparing cultivation practices and helping each other with watering, weeding and composting. As well, the gardeners develop an interest in the plants grown by others. This naturally extends to a discussion about the sorts of dishes for which the fruits and vegetables are used, recipes being compared, and a meal cooked and shared around. The community gardens have played a key role in breaking down racial stereotypes and mistrust, developing cultural links and understandings within the Estate (Bartolomei et al., 2003). This has been done in a non-threatening way for both the people directly involved in the gardens and for those who pass by and admire the harvest. The gardens have also helped migrants feel at home, providing connections with much loved and sadly missed planting and harvesting traditions. One participant, originally from Asia, talked about the importance of communal life in her hometown and how the community garden has provided a comforting link with the past. Russian gardeners spoke about their traditional summerhouse or ‘dacha’ where they spent many happy hours as children and young adults. … traditionally in Russia the garden is not only the source of the harvest, it’s mainly to spend time over there within the traditional family. Also, when the friends are coming and visiting you it’s very enjoyable to spend time together with friends over there in the garden … (Bartolomei et al., 2003: 42)
Figure 13.4 Gardeners in the Community Garden, Waterloo
232 Personal and Economic Security Claiming Space in the Temporal Sphere: The Role of Food in Cultural Enrichment and Understanding In this final section, I move to a different ‘space’ and reflect on food as an occupier of that place. Do these ‘sites’ represent an asset in a multicultural community, creating room for genuine cultural exchange and understanding? Or do they threaten the status quo and the notion of a national dish?10 One focus is the television cooking show, and its related publicity and media products. The other is the outdoor ethnic food fair and one-off street or parkland celebration of culture and diversity. Television in Australia, as elsewhere, is dominated by the celebrity chef ’s cooking show where culturally different cuisines are presented. Of particular interest are those programmes that blend cultures, in similar ways to the best contemporary Australian restaurants. A Gondola on the Murray is one such series which combines memories of the Venetian gondola with Italian cooking in a rural Australian setting. The programme is set against the backdrop of the Murray River and the Sunraysia district, one of the leading food and wine producing regions in the country. Local produce from the area is used in the dishes cooked on air. The emphasis is the creation of a unique cuisine which blends ‘classic Italian style, with modern Australian, and often Asian influences …’ (ABC, 2002a). Secret Recipes: Real Food from Australian Tables takes the viewer on a privileged tour of ‘the homes and kitchens of Australia to discover cooking secrets from around the world’ (ABC, 2002b). Recipes are discussed with migrant home cooks, as are marketing practices, and cultivating vegetables and herbs in a domestic setting. Cultural traditions around eating, feasting and food celebrations are also part of the programme. There is a strong flavour of the vitality of the contribution of immigration to the Australian palate. The theme is one of authenticity, going into ‘real’ people’s homes and kitchens, and being privy to their long held secret recipes, handed down from generation to generation. Another popular temporal form of cultural display and expression is the ethnic fair and festival. Many of these occur across Sydney throughout the year. They are typically financed and organised by the local council, small business operators and community groups. The Korean Food Festival in the suburb of Campsie, which is the geographical heart of Sydney’s Korean community, combines music, song and dance with food served from different stalls lining the streets, which are closed to traffic (see Figure 13.5). Similarly, the Italian community in the Sydney suburb of Haberfield celebrates its local cuisine in the ‘Haberfield Festa’. Billed as ‘the most traditional Italian Festa – a showcase of gourmet food’ (Haberfield Festa, 2002), the streets, free of traffic, are lined with food and produce stalls. Loud music blares across the crowds as they wander under a sea of flags. Local restaurants participate, creating some interesting cultural blends – a crocodile shaped Italian bread and the ‘Big Cannoli’.11 While they might be critiqued as commercially motivated events, the television cooking programme and food fair are important ways of showcasing cultural heritage for both Anglo and non-Anglo communities. As Ang et al. (2002) have
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Figure 13.5 Korean Food Festival, Campsie
demonstrated, this can open up genuine possibilities for cultural exchange and understanding. The manner in which culture is being blended and the resultant representations, for example, the ‘Big Cannoli’ and the recipes which merge the Italian gondola with the Murray River, link different icons from each tradition in a way that says to everyone, ‘we are creating a new identity together’.
Digestive: Conclusions As for the migrants’ gifts to us – they are multiple. Some irascible people might say: ‘only the cafes and cooking’, but anyone who lived in Australia through the ’50s knows that cafes and cooking are life transforming … (Clendinnen, 1999: 21) Communal eating is part of the social fabric of every society. Using different examples from private and public spaces in Sydney, both permanent and temporary, I have shown that food does provide a vehicle for positive cultural interaction, which in turn opens individuals to appreciating and understanding difference. The growing of vegetables and fruits, the preparation of ingredients and cooking of food, together with its consumption during special religious, cultural and family occasions, are all critical markers of home making for the migrant in a new country. Over time these rituals change in response to local customs, climate and lifestyle, blending and mixing to form a cultural fusion between the old and new. In a city such as Sydney, where food and eating are central to social interaction, this cultural fusion has become a unique and wellloved feature for residents and visitors alike.
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Whether or not culturally blended cuisines and their bountiful produce herald the dawning of a new multicultural identity that extends well beyond the dining table and restaurant, is yet to be confirmed. But it is impossible to deny that in the case of Sydney and other global cities, migrant communities have made an enormous contribution to the development of culinary habits that are an asset for the entire community. There have been ‘threats’ along the way, but in terms of cultural expressions of difference, food is the least threatening of all. The danger is that multiculturalism will only be seen as interesting food and exciting restaurants. The challenge is to use food as a way of opening up a space for cultural exchange and understanding.12 For most, this is a non-threatening and enjoyable place where other, more difficult and controversial aspects of cultural difference can be brought to the table.
References Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) (2002a) A Gondola on the Murray, http://abc.net.au/gondola/about.htm, accessed 10 November 2002. —— (2002b) Secret Recipes, http://abc.net.au/secretrecipes/about.htm, accessed 10 November 2002. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2001) 2001 Census: Sydney (Statistical Division), Migrants, http://www.abs.gov.au, accessed 29 November 2003. Ang, Ien; Brand, Jeffrey; Noble, Greg and Wilding, Derek, Living Diversity: Australia’s Multicultural Future, Sydney: SBS, 2002. Armstrong, Helen, ‘Cultural continuity in multicultural sub/urban places’, in K. Gibson and S. Watson (eds), Metropolis Now: Planning and the Urban in Contemporary Australia, Australia: Pluto Press, 1994, p. 102–113. Barer-Stein, Thelma, You Eat What You Are: A Study of Ethnic Food Traditions, Toronto: McCelland and Stewart, 1979. Bartolomei, Linda; Corkery, Linda; Judd, Bruce and Thompson, Susan, A Bountiful Harvest: community gardens and neighbourhood renewal in Waterloo, Sydney: NSW Department of Housing and the University of NSW, 2003. Also available at http://www.housing.nsw.gov.au/news_publications/reports_papers.htm Beardsworth, Alan and Keil, Teresa, Sociology on the Menu: An Invitation to the Study of Food and Society, London: Routledge, 1997. Bell, David and Valentine, Gill, Consuming Geographies: We are what we eat, London: Routledge, 1997. Café Bangla, Menu, Café Bangla, Collected by author, Brick Lane, London, 2001. Castles, Stephen; Kalantzis, Mary; Cope, Bill and Morrissey, Michael, Mistaken Identity: Multiculturalism and the Demise of Nationalism in Australia, Sydney: Pluto Press, 1988. Clark, P., ‘White Worriers’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 1998: 11. Clendinnen, Inga, ‘Heart from History: culture can’t be dragged out for Sunday best’, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 November 1999: 21. Collins, Jock and Castillo, Antonio, Cosmopolitan Sydney: Explore the World in One City, Annandale: Pluto Press Australia, 1998. Collins, Jock; Gibson, Katherine; Alcorso, Caroline; Castles, Stephen and Tait, David, A Shop Full of Dreams: Ethnic Small Business in Australia, Leichhardt: Pluto Press Australia, 1995.
Digestible Difference 235 Connell, Vince, Author’s interview with Vince Connell, Manager, Strategic Planning, Marrickville Council, 16 July 2002, Sydney. Dennis, Anthony, ‘Restaurant Review – Excellent Chinese Seafood Restaurant, Carlingford, Saturday Lunch: Oh broth, what art thou?’, Sydney Morning Herald Metropolitan, 1–2 February 2003: 7. —— ‘Haberfield of Dreams: serious pizza and more in Sydney’s newest Italian precinct’, Sydney Morning Herald Good Living, 7–13 August 2001: 10–11. Dewick, Stephen, The Asianisation of Urban Spaces in Sydney: Planning for Difference in a Contemporary Context, unpublished Bachelor of Town Planning Thesis, Sydney: Faculty of the Built Environment, UNSW, 1999. Dixon, Jane, The Changing Chicken: Chooks, Cooks and Culinary Culture, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002. Dunn, Kevin M.; Hanna, Bronwyn and Thompson, Susan M., ‘The Local Politics of Difference: an examination of inter-communal relations policy in Australian local government’, Environment and Planning A, 2001, Vol. 33: 1577–1595. Evans, Matthew and Hudson, Lisa, The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2003, Australia: Penguin Books, 2002. Fairfield City Council, An Asian Taste Adventure, 2003, http://www.fairfieldcity.nsw.gov.au/default.asp?iDocID=749&iNavCatID= 297&iSubCatID=297, accessed 20 January 2003. Gleeson, Jane; Hamilton, Mary Ann; Morgan, George; Wynne-Jones, Megan and Sharp, Roslyn, Marrickville Backyards, Melbourne: Marrickville Community History Group, Dulwich Hill with Blooming Books, 2001. Gourmet Safaris, Gourmet Safaris, 2002, www.gourmetsafaris.com.au, accessed 3 April 2002. Greenwood, Helen and Newton, John, The Food Shoppers’ Guide to Sydney: an A-Z of where to buy the best, Australia: Penguin Books, 2002. Haberfield Festa, Poster advertising the Haberfield Festa, viewed by author at the Festival, Haberfield, 2002. Hage, Ghassan, White Nation: fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society, Annandale: Pluto Press Australia, 1998. —— ‘At Home in the Entrails of the West: multiculturalism, ethnic food and migrant home-building’, in: H. Grace; G. Hage; L. Johnson; J. Langsworth and M. Sumonds, Home/world: Space, Community and Marginality in Sydney’s west, Annandale: Pluto Press Australia, 1997, 99–153. hooks, bell, Black Looks: Race and Representation, Boston: South End Press, 1992. Horin, Adele, ‘Learning to Dance in the New Suburbia’, Sydney Morning Herald, 21–22 December 2002: 25. Mada Café, Mada Café Brochure, http://www.mado.com.tr/, accessed 6 February 2003. Mennell, Stephen, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present, 2nd edition, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996. —— with Murcott, Anne and Otterloo, Anneke H. van, The Sociology of Food: Eating, Diet and Culture, London: Sage Publications, 1992. Migration Heritage Centre NSW and Fairfield City Council, Tune into Fairfield City: A Multicultural Driving Tour (CD and map), Migration Heritage Centre NSW and Fairfield City Council, NSW (no date). Nilgiri’s, Nilgiri’s Indian Restaurant and Fine Food, 2003, www.nilgiris.com.au, accessed 20 March 2003.
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O’Meara, Maeve and Savill, Joanna, The SBS Eating Guide to Sydney 2002: A Guide to Sydney’s World of Restaurants, Cafés and Food Shops, Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2002. Probyn, Elspeth, Carnal Appetites: FoodSexIdentity, London: Routledge, 2000. Savill, Joanna, ‘A Canterbury Road Tale’, The Sydney Morning Herald Good Living, March 4, 2003: 14–15. —— ‘United nations of food’, The Sydney Morning Herald Good Living, June 25, 2002: 10–13. Smart, Josephine, To Unite or Divide – Chinese Food and the Identity Construction Project in Canada, presentation to the Sixth Metropolis Conference, November 2001, Rotterdam. Smith, John, The Psychology of Food and Eating, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002. Thompson, Susan M.; Dunn, Kevin M.; Burnley, Ian; Murphy, Peter and Hanna, Bronwyn, Multiculturalism and Local Governance: a national perspective, Sydney: Department of Local Government, 1998. Thomposn, Susan M., ‘Planning and Multiculturalism: a reflection on Australian local practice’, Planning Theory and Practice, 2003, Vol. 4, No. 3: 275–293. —— Women’s Stories of Home: Meanings of Home for Ethnic Women Living in Established Migrant Communities, unpublished PhD Thesis, Sydney: University of Sydney, 1996. —— ‘Suburbs of Opportunity: The power of home for migrant women’, in: K. Gibson and S. Watson (eds), Metropolis Now: Planning and the Urban in Contemporary Australia, Australia: Pluto Press, 1994, 33–45. Wood, B. (ed.), Tucker in Australia, Melbourne: Hill of Content, 1977.
Notes 1 My focus on Sydney in this chapter does not imply that cultural cuisine is unimportant or invisible in other world cities. Cultural cuisine is very much a global phenomenon. Nevertheless, Sydney, with its large ethnic population (some 31 per cent of its 4 million inhabitants were born overseas (ABS, 2001)) is an excellent example of how migrant communities use food to claim space and express their cultural heritage. Food and its consumption are a key part of community life in Sydney, which boasts an increasingly sophisticated culinary adjunct to its many tourist attractions. My knowledge of Sydney and the ways in which ethnicity and food have come together in its private and public spheres, provide a rich resource from which I draw. The examples cited parallel similar situations in other international multicultural cities. 2 This quote comes from my extensive work on home and migrant women living in Sydney. I studied the ways that Greek, Arabic and Vietnamese women created a sense of belonging in the city. I explored different aspects of home making, including the importance of cooking and food to cultural continuation (Thompson, 1994; 1996). 3 The reality of Australian ethnic small business success is presented in A Shop Full of Dreams (Collins et al., 1995). This study reveals that not all were successful and for those who did make money, there were huge sacrifices involving hard work, long hours and little or no time for recreation. This reality is often overlooked by those who perceive the ethnic business as a threat to their own economic prosperity and growth. 4 Local councils were often very heavy handed in their treatment of food premises which failed to comply with local regulations. Over time there has been a realisation that regulations are often not understood. To improve the situation brochures explaining the standards are now translated into community languages. 5 Cosmopolitan Sydney (Collins and Castillo, 1998) provides a guide to the geographic concentrations of different ethnic communities and their restaurants and food stores. The book sets this discussion in the broader context of Sydney’s cultural heritage. It
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10 11
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begins with an overview of indigenous issues and lists museums and galleries where Aboriginal history, art and culture can be viewed and better understood. In a similar vein, the reader is provided with historical information about migration to Australia, important cultural traditions, celebrations and landmarks, including places of worship. Interview with an ethnic community representative on a Multicultural Advisory Committee to a local Sydney Council conducted as part of research into local government and multicultural policy (Thompson et al., 1998). Interview with an Iranian woman who migrated to Germany and then to Australia, conducted as part of research into community perceptions of local government and multicultural policy. Contact author for details (
[email protected]). There are cases where this division is being addressed. The Auburn Gallipoli Mosque, in the heart of Sydney’s Turkish community, has an impressive community outreach programme, which includes an annual ‘Friendship and Dialogue Dinner’. Food is used to bring together representatives from different faith and secular community groups to share their thoughts on a religiously diverse Australia in an environment of sharing and understanding (see http://www.affinity.org.au/). This quote is from a younger Greek woman whose parents migrated to Australia when she was a small child. It is taken from my work on migrant women and home (Thompson, 1996). Pride in culinary contributions can also be seen in many ethnic eating-houses in Sydney. One such example is in the suburb of Auburn where Sydney’s Turkish community resides. The café Mada, exquisitely decorated with Turkish artefacts, sells ice cream made in the traditional Turkish way. A brochure explains that the manufacturing tradition goes back some 150 years and that the café is part of a chain of establishments across Turkey, Cyprus, Germany, Croatia and Greece (Mada Café, no date). In Britain it has been reported that the ‘true national dish’ is no longer fish and chips, but a popular variety of hot Indian spiced curry (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ europe/country_profiles/1038758.stm, accessed 30 August 2003). Australian culture boasts a tradition of ‘big things’ around a culinary theme. In rural towns one can find the Big Prawn, the Big Oyster and the Big Banana, to name a few. Haberfield’s ‘Big Cannoli’ continues this custom by blending an Italian food icon with an Australian symbol to form a cultural hybrid thereby bringing the two traditions together. In my course Social Planning I use food in this way (see http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/ degrees/BPlan/ for details about the context of this course). Students come from different cultural backgrounds and each week bring a plate of food which in some way represents their cultural heritage. As they share this with their classmates, they talk about the recipe, the way in which the food is prepared and the traditional contexts in which it is eaten and enjoyed. This has opened up a wealth of discussion opportunities about many aspects of cultural difference and ethnicity, as well as creating a strong community within our multicultural classroom.
14 Feeding the Festive City Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Tourist Industry Jan Rath
Fine China1 Dancing dragons, swirling ribbons, and divine equines – a symbol of beauty and power – abound as the Year of the Horse gallops into town. In Chinatown, one of Gotham’s most culturally rich communities, the sense of festivity is palpable when the downtown neighborhood hosts its annual Chinese New Year Parade. Snaking through narrow winding streets lined with signs in Chinese calligraphy and phone booths with pagoda roofs, a procession to greet the Year of the Horse will feature agile dancers in elaborate lion and dragon costumes, stilt walkers, marching bands, and dozens of masked performers – carrying out an ancient ritual to scare away evil and bring luck. Stop for a red-bean bun from a sidewalk vendor and join the multi-block party beginning at Mott and Mosco Sts., and ending at Chatham Square. These are the opening lines of a story featured by the February 2002 issue of INNew York (p. 27), a glossy magazine targeting the innumerable visitors to New York City. And sure enough, thousands upon thousands of spectators – both Asian and non-Asian – showed up and rubbed shoulders on this sunny winter afternoon. The crowd listened to the deafening drum beat, ogled at young ladies dressed up in colourful costumes, saluted marching veterans, and cheered processing community organizations such as the National Chinese Welfare Council, Better Chinatown Association, the Local 23–25 UNITE union of female garment workers, and the Asian American Postal Employee Association. Before and after the parade, the visitors shopped around, bought stuff from vendors, and enjoyed a fabulous lunch in one of the many restaurants. Happy New Year! Similar festivities took place in other cities with large Chinese communities such as Boston and San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver, Melbourne and Sydney, London and Birmingham, and so forth. Originally, the Lunar New Year celebrations were a matter of locals only, an occasion to meet and greet and experience and strengthen feelings of belonging to the Chinese community, but they increasingly involve a broader public. Once a ghetto of deprivileged
Feeding the Festive City 239 outsiders and a place to avoid, Chinatown nowadays stirs the imagination of mainstream people and attracts local and international visitors. The tourists and leisure-seekers – generally ignorant of the sundry contradictions that go with this development – indulge the pleasures that are so nicely advertised in IN-New York, in tourist guides and on the web.2 The image and appeal of these Chinatowns are so strong that they have become export products. Chinatowns are emerging or re-emerging in various European cities. The Netherlands is a case in point. In this country, where the political mood has rapidly turned against immigration and the concomitant ethnic diversity, the main cities are conspicuously interested in the establishment of a Chinatown within their city limits. In The Hague, where the immigration of Chinese is actually rather recent, the City actively promotes the transformation of the Wagenstraat – an insignificant shopping strip along the ‘exotic’ City Mondial tour – into a Chinese precinct. Rotterdam and Amsterdam have had concentrations of Chinese immigrants since 1911, when Chinese sailors were recruited from London as scabs and settled in their ‘colonies’ close to the docks (van Heek, 1936). In Rotterdam, Chinese businesses have gradually moved out of the infamous Katendrecht district and gravitated to the West Kruiskade area in the inner city, and today city planners are considering the possibility of converting this particular precinct into a ‘real’ Chinatown with a gate, lions and all that jazz (de Gruiter, 2000), or anyway, into an ‘exotic’ shopping zone. In Amsterdam, Chinese businesses abound in the area around the Binnen Bantammerstraat, the Zeedijk, the Nieuwmarkt and the Geldersekade, thus in the downtown streets adjacent to the famous red-light district, another major tourist attraction. In the 1970s, these run-down streets were the dirty and creepy turf of heroine addicts and potheads, a no-go area for decent family people, but since the 1980s the City of Amsterdam has been revitalizing the area. It has made a clean sweep, renewed the streetscape and interfaced with local (business) community organizations. The fact that a large hotel chain decided to build a new hotel at the head of the Zeedijk, opposite of Central Station, worked out favourably for this development, and so did the establishment of the Buddhist Temple Fo Quan Shan. Today, the Zeedijk is a tourist magnet for people from all walks of life, including international business people, local pleasure seekers, backpackers as well as drug addicts, lager louts, and the Dutch Queen Beatrix (who officially opened the Temple). Meanwhile local Chinese entrepreneurs in collaboration with Taiwanese investors are planning a major up-market extension of Chinatown. The new centre of business services too contributes to the city’s goal to brand Amsterdam as a centre of cosmopolitanism. What we observe here is a complex set of phenomena. In this paper, I am mainly concerned with the articulation of cultural diversity by immigrants and the rise of the tourist industry in gateway cities. More particularly, I am interested in the involvement of immigrants as producers of tourist attractions. I will argue that, under particular circumstances, the commodification of cultural features helps foster the inclusion of both highly skilled and unskilled immigrants in the emerging service economy and, at the same time, allows them to boost the
240 Personal and Economic Security urban economy. There is ample evidence showing that this process is occurring in typical countries of immigration in North America and Australia. The question is whether the commodification of cultural features will also work for advanced welfare states in continental Europe. Gøsta Esping-Andersen (1990) and various other scholars are suspicious of commodification. Inspired by the work of Karl Marx and Karl Polanyi, they believe that people should be permitted to make their living standards independent of pure market forces. As commodities, people are captive to powers beyond their control, become replaceable, easily redundant and atomised (Esping-Andersen 1990: 37). The commodity, moreover, is easily destroyed by even minor social contingencies, such as illness, and by macro-events, such as the business cycle. Although the arguments against commodification are strong and convincing, it should not be treated as an ironclad rule. The commodification of particular features of cultural identity – Esping-Andersen would probably treat this as another social contingency – offers immigrants opportunities that otherwise would not exist. Besides, the immigrants’ contribution to the local economy suggests that immigrants are not just dependent on macro-events, but in principle as agents capable of influencing it. It seems to me that this is sufficient reason to examine the immigrant tourist industry. This, admittedly, does not mean that every individual involved in the immigrant tourist industry is able to gain upward social mobility and automatically join the ranks of the riches. On the contrary, various risks and perverse effects lurk in this development. In this paper, I deal with the background of this new avenue of immigrant economic incorporation. I especially discuss the role played by immigrants, the local government and various cultural mediators.
Entrepreneurs, Consumers and the Critical Infrastructure The proliferation of ethnic tourist attractions draws our attention to the entrepreneurial side of this development. Most studies of immigrant/ethnic entrepreneurship focus on entrepreneurs only and are mainly interested in explaining the proclivity of certain groups towards entrepreneurship and their paths to entrepreneurial success.3 Scholars studying these questions have developed several theoretical approaches, ranging from those emphasizing the cultural endowments of immigrants (i.e., certain groups are culturally inclined towards risk-taking behaviour; see Light, 1972; Metcalf, et al., 1996), to others that highlight racist exclusion and blocked mobility in the regular labour market (i.e., marginalized individuals are driven towards entrepreneurialism as a means of escaping unwelcoming labour markets; see Barrett, et al., 1996; Collins et al., 1995; Ram, 1993; Saxenian, 1999). About a decade ago, Waldinger and his associates (1990) developed a composite theory that brought together these views, based on the principle that entrepreneurship is the product of the interaction between group characteristics and the opportunity structure. As such their interactive model combines ethno-cultural and
Feeding the Festive City 241 socio-cultural factors (agency) with politico-economic factors (structure). According to Waldinger et al., the latter entail market conditions (particularly access to ethnic/non-ethnic consumer markets) and access to ownership (in the form of business vacancies, competition for vacancies, and government policies). This interactive model has been appreciated as an important step towards a more comprehensive theoretical approach, even though it is more of a classification than an explanatory model. However, it has also been subjected to criticism. Its shortcomings included its methodology (Light and Rosenstein, 1995), the lack of attention devoted to issues of class and gender (Collins et al., 1995; Morokvasic, 1993), insufficient emphasis on processes of racialization of immigrants (Collins et al., ibid.), a priori categorization of immigrants as ethnic groups and the concomitant assumption that immigrants as ethnic entrepreneurs act differently than mainstream entrepreneurs (Rath and Kloosterman, 2000), and the narrow and static way economic and politico-regulatory factors are dealt with (Bonacich, 1993; Rath, 2000). As regards the latter, the authors conceive market conditions in terms of the ethnicization or de-ethnicization of consumer markets, and confine politico-regulatory factors to a short list of laws and regulations that specifically apply to immigrants. Theoretical development has continued and, oddly enough, this has led to a convergence of approaches to issues of social embeddedness, that is, the assumption that individual entrepreneurs participate in ethnically specific economic networks that facilitate their business operations (especially in acquiring knowledge, distributing information, recruiting capital and labour, and establishing relations with clients and suppliers). Social embeddedness enables entrepreneurs to reduce transaction costs by eliminating formal contracts, gaining privileged access to vital economic resources, and providing reliable expectations as to the effects of malfeasance. Particularly in cases where the entrepreneurs’ primary input is cheap and flexible labour, as is true of some parts of the tourist industry, the reduction of transaction costs by mobilizing social networks for labour recruitment seems key. Many students of immigrant entrepreneurship, especially in the US, are indeed fervent adherents to a version of economic sociological thought that focus on the entrepreneurs’ social networks and impact on entrepreneurship (see for example Yoo, 1998; Zhou, 1992). However, taking advantage of social embeddedness is a complex and dynamic process, is connected to cultural, human and financial capital (Light and Gold, 2000), is contingent on the goals pursued and the political and economic forces at work (Granovetter, 1995; Kumcu, 2001), and is the product of the interaction of structural factors such as migration history and processes of social, economic and political incorporation in the mainstream as well as their spatial variations. These intricacies, however, have not always been adequately addressed. In recent years, continental European researchers have argued that these theories of immigrant entrepreneurialism conceptualized the opportunity structure with the assumption of an unregulated and undifferentiated economy. They subsequently paid scant attention to the array of regulatory structures that promote certain economic activities while inhibiting others. For example, in
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France, non-citizens are excluded from most jobs in the public sector (meaning that approximately 7 million jobs are out of their reach – see Ma Mung, 2001). In contrast, Canada has adopted affirmative action hiring rules in the federal civil service in an effort to attract non-European minorities, and does not differentiate between landed immigrants and citizens. Another example: while virtually anyone can establish a private business in the United States, in Germany and even more so in Austria individuals must apply for special licences even to sell flowers in restaurants and bars, and they need the approval of a particular organization to engage in most forms of production or service (see for instance Haberfellner, 2003). European researchers have not only argued that it is important to address these highly relevant forms of regulation, but also to fully appreciate the economic dynamics of a market. It does not require much sociological imagination to see that designers of virtual tourist guides, pencils vendors, or take-out restauranteurs operate in entirely different markets. Different markets obviously offer different opportunities and obstacles, demand different skills, and lead to different outcomes in terms of business success or – at a higher level of agglomeration – a different ethnic division of labour. Acknowledging the salience of regulation as well as market dynamics, researchers have proposed a mixed embeddedness approach to immigrant entrepreneurship (Kloosterman, et al., 1999; Kloosterman and Rath 2001, 2003; Rath 2002a). The approach is considered to be more appropriate, since it relates social relations and transactions to wider political and economic structures. It acknowledges the significance of immigrants’ concrete embeddedness in social networks, and conceives that their relations and transactions are embedded in a more abstract way in wider economic and politico-institutional structures. While appreciating the relevance of cultural structures for economic development – I will substantiate this later – the study of the immigrant tourist industry must be situated within this emerging analytical approach. Another closely related source of theoretical inspiration is the work by Light and Rosenstein (1995). These authors position entrepreneurs in a market, comparable to the labour market, where opportunities for business ventures are the product of demand and supply: entrepreneurs supply goods and services and, in so doing, meet the demand of consumers. If we continue this line of argument we envisage a dynamic entrepreneurial market full of contingencies. A multitude of factors and processes of a structural and contingent kind are at play and, consequently, demand and supply are never in equilibrium. •
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First, the opportunity structure is continuously undergoing slow and sudden changes of various kinds, due to the disappearance of old consumers and competitors and the emergence of new ones, the development of new products, the establishment of new commercial sites, the revision of relevant rules and regulations and so forth. Second, entrepreneurs have agency. They are not just passive actors, the plaything of an abstract opportunity structure, but are able to create their own opportunities or at least make an impact on the wider opportunity structure.
Feeding the Festive City 243 •
Finally, the dynamism of the entrepreneurial market is contingent on a set of intervening variables that influence and shape the interaction between entrepreneurs and the opportunity structure. It is the dynamic interaction between entrepreneurs and their social, political and economic environment that largely produces entrepreneurial behaviour and business success, in this case in the tourist industry.
This approach is interesting because it draws the attention to the demand side, i.e. consumers, an aspect often overlooked in entrepreneurship literature. It is evident that tourist entrepreneurs, or any other entrepreneur for that matter, cannot survive without a demand for goods or services, and it is therefore relevant to examine the critical role played by consumers and their interactions with entrepreneurs. This, to be sure, does not mean that the interaction between the producers of tourist attractions on the one hand and their consumers on the other is confined to one-to-one relations. In the tourist market – as elsewhere – supply and demand is mediated. Here we enter the realm of studies on the emerging knowledge economy and the role of cities as places of information circulation, creativity and consumption. The growth of the urban tourist industry is intricately linked with the rapid transformation of the manufacturing economy to the informational economy and beyond. De-industrialization resulted in the need for localities to differentiate themselves in order to attract a share of this spatially mobile capital. In the case of cities in particular, authorities ranging from local governments to marketing consortia have been striving to present localities as attractive to potential investors, employers, inhabitants, and tourists (Kearns and Philo 1993). It can be noted that: the less important the spatial barriers, the greater the sensitivity of capital to the variations of place within space, and the greater the incentive for places to be differentiated in ways attractive to capital. (Harvey, 1989: 295–296) Urban cultural diversity is then a vital resource for the prosperity of cities and a potential catalyst for socio-economic development, particularly since business investors consider this diversity as one of the factors determining the location of businesses. Pine and Gilmore (1999) argue that this coincides with the emergence of a form of hyper-capitalism, which revolves not only around regular goods and services but also around experiences. In the same vein, Wolf (1999) demonstrates that media and entertainment have moved beyond culture to become the driving wheel of the global economy. Providing access to experiences then opens the door to economic resources, and that is why city governments have become so keen on encouraging tourism (Rifkin 2000). Cities, faced with job losses and decay, engage in ‘a desperate struggle for survival’ and one after the other bets on the tourist industry, a sector with few barriers to entry and the potential for
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large returns (Sorkin, 1992; Webster, 2001). Creative cities stand out and are able to attract holiday tourists as well as mobile professional workers and mobile capital (Hall, 2000). The commodification and marketing of diversity, i.e. the commercial use of the presence of the ethnic ‘others’ or their symbols, fits in well with this process (Halter 2000). The chances of this occurring are obviously contingent on the level of living, lifestyle and consumption patterns of those living in Western cities and the degree to which they develop a distinctive taste for cultural products offered by migrant and minority groups. In a series of publications, Zukin explores the city’s symbolic economy and provides several important ideas that help us understand the processes leading to the new valorization of ethnic city spaces. She describes the growing enthusiasm for ‘interesting’ landscapes that have the potential to draw tourists (Zukin, 1995), and explores the relationship between industrial restructuring and the deterioration of factory landscapes versus the growing significance of places of consumption. Zukin (1991: 16; see also Zukin et al., 1998a) reminds us that landscapes are ‘contentious, compromised product[s] of society’ that create visual order and, in so doing, both reveal and conceal social processes. She is particularly concerned with the growing social polarization evident in many Western societies and devotes much of her effort to understanding places that appeal to affluent consumers. These include landscapes of leisure, such as Disney World, Coney Island or Las Vegas, as well as gentrified inner-city neighbourhoods that contain mixed land uses. These places contribute both materially and symbolically to the urban economy and are therefore highly prized by planners and city boosters (Zukin 1998b). To foster this process, city governments attempt to attract investment (or invest themselves) in high-profile events, institutions, and symbolic land uses, such as the Olympic Games, international sports teams, and towers or special bridges. In the past, a number of place marketing practitioners have been quoted as admitting that they promoted exactly the same images working for other cities (see Burgess, 1982: 6). Indeed, place marketing has to some extent a universal nature, with every city seeking to be an arts Mecca, have a waterfront, and have a fascinating heritage. However, some also emphasize areas of the city that may interest local consumers or tourists, especially ethnic festivals and ethnic precincts that offer a wealth of goods and services that appear exotic, exciting and authentic. As Zukin notes, this has led to a sea-change in the way these types of areas are understood and represented by the state: ‘Elected officials who, in the 1960s, might have criticized immigrants and nontraditional living arrangements, now consciously market the city’s diverse opportunities for cultural consumption’ (1998b: 836). This process leads to a commodification of diversity and has led to a situation where culture – particularly immigrant and minority cultures – can be seen as an economic resource for cities. Zukin (1991), moreover, argues that there is a critical infrastructure of individuals who are connected in some way with cultural production and appreciation and who influence public taste. The critical infrastructure covers a broad spectrum of
Feeding the Festive City 245 knowledge workers that design cultural production and consumption, and entails connoisseurs, cultural mediators, and marketing bureaux, but also business associations, tourist boards and parts of the (national and local) government. Regardless of their intentions, the critical infrastructure affects the popularity of particular cultural products. It identifies ‘relevant’ cultural products, makes statements concerning their real or alleged authenticity and the significance of consuming, and helps shape the multicultural urban landscape. The messages from this critical infrastructure are not simply ‘free floating’, but are provided through the Internet or more regular means of communication, through the behaviour of trendsetters or other people from the cultural vanguard, through the programmes of specific educational institutes, or through the provision of ready-to-consume products and services. As Zukin notes, shifting preferences have an impact on the nature of production and ultimately bestow opportunities on some groups and their areas of the city while simultaneously making other groups and areas largely invisible to ‘the people who matter’. How the critical infrastructure functions and how immigrant producers of tourist attractions on the one hand and their consumers on the other hand fit into this are a matter of further research.
Diversity Dividend in an Emerging Economy The tourist and leisure industry (hereafter abbreviated to tourist industry) is one of the fastest growing industries. In some cases, its contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has surpassed that of any manufacturing sector. The World Travel & Tourism Council (2001a and 2001b) estimated that travel and tourism generated US$ 4,494.5 billion of economic activity in year 2001, and expected it to grow to US$ 9,285.9 billion by 2011. A large part of this amount is generated in the European Union and by 2011 Europe’s share is expected to grow to 32 per cent of the global total, in real terms, per annum. Today in the European Union, travel and tourism contribute on average 4.8 per cent to GDP, and is responsible for an estimated 19,340,000 jobs or 12.3 per cent of the workforce (that is 1 in every 8.2 jobs). This, of course, varies among countries, but the gist of the argument remains the same: tourism is a job machine. It is not only growing, it is also all-inclusive: it offers opportunities to a variety of people, including natives and immigrants, highly skilled and unskilled, males and females. They participate as organisers of cultural events, as web designers, as owners of cafés, coffee shops, restaurants, travel bureaux, hotels, souvenir shops, telephone and Internet shops, but also as waiters, cooks, dishwashers and janitors. Together, they engender ‘globalization from below’ and, as Henry et al., (2000) put it, ‘create mainstream but unique products in terms of innovation, production and consumption’. In doing so, they increasingly funnel new business investors and other people with resources to cities (Fainstein and Judd 1999). Immigrants in Europe initiated the award winning4 ‘tropical’ carnivals (in Notting Hill, Berlin and Rotterdam), the Bollywood film festival (in The Hague),
246 Personal and Economic Security the Kwakoe soccer festival (in Amsterdam), and Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations and Moon festivals (almost everywhere) and so forth. Some of these festivities last just one day but others a few weeks. They attract hundreds of thousands and in some cases over a million spectators, and are widely covered by the mass media. Immigrants have also created ethnic commercial precincts or revived those in decline. Many cities have ethnic precincts or neighbourhoods that add to the ‘exotic’ tourist experience. In some cases, one immigrant ethnic group dominates, as is the case of Chinatown (in many cities), the Balti Quarter (in Birmingham), or Kreuzberg (‘Klein Istanbul’ in Berlin), but in other cases the precincts are ethnically mixed. The Moraria district (in Lisbon), the Brabantstraat and Dansaerstraat shopping strips (in Brussels), or De Pijp (in Amsterdam) are well-known examples of such multi-ethnic precincts. Whatever the case, festive and commercial expressions of cultural diversity are gaining popularity in North American and Europe’s gateway cities. The fact that they attract the attention of mass tourists and have become economically significant underscores the emerging connections between the new service knowledge economy, and immigrants as potential generators of urban socioeconomic development. This constitutes a challenge. Should this model of socio-economic development be supported, thereby allowing immigrants to form ethnic economies, or should the integration of immigrants in regular sectors of the economy be encouraged, even if this increases the risk of excluding unskilled immigrants? Traditional countries of settler immigration, such as the United States, Canada and Australia, acknowledged the potential of cultural diversity a long time ago. Since the 1970s, the ‘Chinese quarter’ in the City of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, has been selected as a symbol of cultural diversity and an object of civic pride (Anderson, 1990). The government has courted the precinct for its perceived distinctiveness and started sponsoring major redevelopment plans to boost declining areas. In so doing, Melbourne joined its counterparts in American and Canadian cities. As early as 1938 the City of Vancouver ‘officially’ opened up its Chinatown to tourism (Anderson, 1988: 141) and well before then, in the 1880s, it became fashionable for middle-class New Yorkers to go slumming or ‘rubbernecking’ in Chinatown (Lin, 1998: 174). It is clear that immigrants – in this case by opening and operating all kinds of tourist oriented commercial ventures – have provided what Australians today would call a diversity dividend or an ethnic advantage. In this way, these countries of immigration are far ahead of Europe. Ethnic festivals are now abundant on the other side of the oceans and masses of people, including people in the mainstream, enjoy and appreciate them greatly. The popularity of St Patrick’s Day Parades, Puerto Rican Day Parades, Dragon Boat Regattas, Food Festivals and similar events has become immense, and mainstream corporations have become a party to this development (Halter, 2000). These corporations, interestingly enough, have followed the example of small innovative ethnic businesses and become part and parcel of the market for cultural diversity. This demonstrates that the tourist industry – possibly more than most other parts of the knowledge economy –
Feeding the Festive City 247 allows small entrepreneurs to make an impact, even if they lack specialized knowledge or large capital resources. Ethnic precincts have the potential to draw tourists provided that ethnic urban spaces are valorized. This transformation is not a ‘natural’ process, but the product of social, cultural, economic and political developments and conditions. These conditions are to a large extent contingent on each other in a process of cumulative causation. First of all, the social infrastructure must be capable of supporting the development of a regular precinct into a tourist attraction. Ethnic precincts – except perhaps the manufactured ones such as the Chinatown in Las Vegas – are commonly the product of the activities of immigrant ethnic communities. It is important that they find themselves a space that serves as the nodal point of community life. This does not necessarily imply that immigrants must live in the precinct. Leichhardt is Sydney’s Little Italy, but has ceased to be the home to the Italian population. It is nevertheless here where the Italian community meets and where the sites, sounds, flavours and irresistible aromas of Italy come alive (Collins and Castillo, 1998). Second, there must be a proliferation of small-businesses based on the commodification of ethnic features. An ethnic precinct needs shops to foster public life, to give tourists an excuse to hang around and pass the time, and last but not least to give the neighbourhood its ethnic flavour. Book and music stores, gift shops, travel agents, and especially restaurants, groceries, and supermarkets do have that capacity. Furthermore, the immigrant tourist sector must be part of a larger tourist industry. If such a larger industry does not really exist in the city, the odds are against a quick take off of such a sector. The ‘difficult area of Bradford, England – not a “natural” tourist attraction’ – is a case in point. The local government’s strategy to attract leisure tourists, among others by promoting the ‘Flavours of Asia’ and by using support from the private sector and funds from Europe, has not fundamentally improved the attractiveness of the city since the mid-1980s (Hope and Klemm, 2001: 633). Although there have been some improvements to the infrastructure, the image of Bradford is still unfavourable. Third, the critical infrastructure support and promote ethnic theming. A substantial number of consumers must be captivated with ethnic-specific attractions. This seems self-evident, but is related to structural attitudes towards particular immigrant ethnic groups and their institutions. At the time when the climate of opinion about the presence of Chinese immigrants was still fairly negative, there were apparently sufficient people whose curiosity was aroused by the unfamiliar shops. These ‘rubberneckers’, as they were labelled, came mainly from the fashionable middle class, and constitutes a critical mass big enough to give the Chinatown tourist industry a start (Lin, 1998: 174). If such a critical mass does not exist or if only negative opinions about (particular) ethnic enclaves are socially accepted, the odds are against the development of an ethnic tourist industry. And finally, a number of regulatory matters need to be fulfilled. This can be accomplished by favourable zoning regulation, by creating a clean and safe environment, by ensuring the accessibility of the area. Especially the prevalence of
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crime in (ethnic) commercial precincts may undermine the prospects of becoming a tourist attraction. Last but not least, as the North American and Australian experiences show, various factors and processes might gum up the transformation of cultural resources into an economic asset or produce negative (‘perverse’) effects: •
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First, I already alluded to the bifurcation of the knowledge industry. There is no reason to assume that the tourist industry constitutes an exception to all this and that any participant automatically gains upward social mobility. The involvement of some may be confined to low-skill, low-wage, dead-end service jobs or to self-exploitative mom ‘n’ pop stores (Parker, 2002; Valle and Torres, 2000). Second, it is possible that intra-ethnic conflict will occur between those who control the ethnic tourist industry and those who provide the hard labour (Chang, 2000; Light and Wong, 1975). The literature only indirectly deals with class-based conflicts within immigrant enterprises, but there are indications that immigrant entrepreneurs – i.e. the designated producers of tourist attractions – engage in types of exploitation too (Fong, 1994; Lin, 1998). These types may differ from the regular ones, due to various socio-economic and ethno-cultural particularities, but this of course needs to be proved rather than assumed. Third, in the same vein, there are indications that tourist enterprises reinforce power differentials between genders (Narayan, 1995). Like many other sectors of the economy, tourism constitutes a gendered labour market. Of particular importance is the ‘assistance’ of (unpaid) (female) family labour in making the venture successful (Zhang, 1999). Fourth, stereotypes about the ‘authentic’ ethnic Other or the ‘authentic’ ethnic experience may be reinforced (Anderson, 1998; Fainstein and Gladstone, 1999). As Selwyn (1996) shows, tourism is about the creation of myths, images and fantasies, particularly about the ‘exotic’ Other. The development of tourism does require the production of mythical places and hosts, but these myths are underpinned by politico-economic and cultural dependencies. The issue at stake is whether immigrants as the ‘toured Other’ are being reduced to a tourist object or quite on the contrary emerge as subjects of a new tourist practice in the city (Morris, 1995). While acknowledging that the tourist industry entails a ‘performative repertoire of cultural displays that increasingly serve the consumptive and spectating demands of outsider audiences’, Lin (1998: 205) also points to the risks of such voyeurism and stereotyping. Fifth, and this is related to the previous point, immigrants are not always overenthusiastic about the transformation of their shopping precincts or ethnic festivals into tourist attractions. In many cases, shops and festivals were established with the intention of catering to the (material or emotional) needs of the in-group only. Their exposure to an ever-wider public may be interpreted as undesirable interference with one’s owns affairs or even as a kind of
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cultural imperialism. This may, under certain circumstances, lead to resistance and conflicts (Lin, 1998; Tak, 1996). Sixth, and this is especially the case when the (local) government acknowledges the economic significance of immigrant neighbourhoods as tourist attractions, there is a risk that regulation aimed at the preservation of these sites only serves the homogenisation and fossilisation of urban landscapes and the depletion of its economic dynamics (Anderson, 1995; Lin, 1998). The tourist industry then becomes a ‘tourist trap’ (Anderson, 1990) Finally, the involvement of immigrants in the tourist industry does not inevitably contribute to the full acceptance and integration of immigrant communities. It is possible that tensions between tourists and locals emerge or are reinforced, for instance concerning the use of public space (Chang, 2000; Mitchell, 1993; Anderson, 1988).
Conclusions As stated in a document on European Spatial Development Perspective, the natural and the cultural heritages of Europe are economic factors, which are becoming increasingly important for regional development (European Commission, 1999: 30). Urban tourism accounts for approximately 30 per cent of European tourism, and is expected to grow at a rate of 5 per cent in the years ahead. The tourist industry, moreover, provides opportunities to immigrants of both genders. The industry constitutes – in principle – a powerful interface between highly skilled and unskilled immigrants on the one hand and the wider knowledge economy on the other. If the sector fulfils its promise and allows for the commodification of immigrants’ ethnic-cultural resources, it helps foster the making of the cosmopolitan city, enhances the city’s potential to attract (international) knowledge workers and business investors, and – last but not least – strengthens the social and economic integration of immigrants. However, it is not a matter of course that this occurs and, even if this were the case, that any immigrant is able to gain upward social mobility or contribute to the full acceptance and integration of immigrant communities. In this chapter, I have argued that the growth of the urban tourist industry is intricately linked with the rapid transformation of the manufacturing economy into the informational economy and beyond, the emergence of a form of hypercapitalism which revolves around regular goods and services but also around experiences, the continuous immigration and its concomitant cultural diversification, and the frenetic competition between cities. The commodification and marketing of diversity, i.e. the commercial use of the presence of the ethnic Other or their symbols, seems to fit in well with this process. In so doing, this chapter goes beyond the popular orthodoxy and put more emphasis on the demand side of immigrant enterprises as well as the mediators who affect the interaction of supply and demand. Following Fainstein and Judd (1999: 5) and Zukin (1991), I posit that various components of urban tourism – the producers of tourist attractions, the
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consumers, the critical infrastructure and the (local) government – interact to produce a complex but also dynamic ecological system, dramatically affecting the political economy of cities. On this note, Zukin’s concept of the critical infrastructure is especially relevant. The critical infrastructure covers a broad spectrum of knowledge workers that designs cultural production and consumption. It identifies ‘relevant’ cultural products, makes statements as regards to their real or alleged authenticity and the significance of consuming, and helps shape the tourist industry by providing information through the Internet or more regular means of communication, by being the cultural vanguard that sets the example, by offering opportunities for education aimed at this sector, or by providing ready-to-consume products and services. I concluded the chapter by pointing to various processes that might gum up the transformation of cultural resources into an economic asset. The processes revolve around issues such as the size, nature and development of the tourist industry at large; tensions between immigrant communities and the wider society due to undesired interference in the internal dynamics of ethnic precincts, ethnic stereotyping, voyeurism and fossilising urban landscapes; and the approach regarding tackling crime; and the risks of bifurcation in terms of class, gender and economic achievement.
References Anderson, K. J. (1995) Vancouver’s Chinatown. Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875–1980, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. —— (1990) “‘Chinatown re-oriented”. A critical analysis of recent redevelopment schemes in a Melbourne and Sydney enclave’, Australian Geographical Studies, 28, pp. 131–154. —— (1988) ‘Cultural Hegemony and the race-definition process in Chinatown, Vancouver: 1880–1980’, Environment and Planning D. Society and Space, 6, pp. 127–149. Barrett, G., T. Jones and D. McEvoy (1996) ‘Ethnic minority business. Theoretical discourse in Britain and North America’, Urban Studies, 33 (4–5), pp. 783–809. Bonacich, E. (1993), ‘The Other Side of Ethnic Entrepreneurship: A Dialogue with Waldinger, Aldrich, Ward and Associates’, International Migration Review, 27: 685–692. Burgess, J. (1982) ‘Selling Places. Environmental Images for the Executive’, Regional Studies, 16 (1), pp. 1–17. Chang, T. C. (2000) ‘Singapore’s Little India. A tourist attraction as a contested landscape’, Urban Studies, 37 (2), pp. 343–366. Collins, J. and A. Castillo (1998) Cosmopolitan Sydney. Explore the World in One City, Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press with Comerford and Miller. —— with K. Gibson, C. Alcorso, D. Tait, and S. Castles (1995) A Shop Full of Dreams. Ethnic Small Business in Australia, Sydney and London: Pluto Press. Esping-Andersen, G. (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press. European Commission (1999) European Spatial Development Perspective. Towards a Balanced and Sustainable Development of the Territory of the European Union, Potsdam. Fainstein, S. S. and D. R. Judd (1999) ‘Global forces, local strategies, and urban tourism’, p. 1–17 in D. R. Judd and S. S. Fainstein (Eds), The Tourist City, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Feeding the Festive City 251 —— and D. Gladstone (1999) ‘Evaluating urban tourism, p. 21–34 in: D. R. Judd and S. S. Fainstein (Eds), The Tourist City, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Fong, T. P. (1994) The First Suburban Chinatown. The Remaking of Monterey Park, California, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Granovetter, M. (1995), ‘The Economic Sociology of Firms and Entrepreneurs’, in A. Portes (ed.), The Economic Sociology of Immigration: Essays on Networks, Ethnicity, and Entrepreneurship, pp. 128–165, New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Gruiter, K. de (2000) West Kruiskade, Rotterdam: WijkOntwikkelingsMaatschappij. Haberfellner, R. (2003) ‘The Case of Austria: Immigrant Self-employment in a Highly Regulated Economy’, in R. Kloosterman and J. Rath (Eds), Immigrant Entrepreneurs. Venturing Abroad in the Age of Globalization, Oxford/New York: Berg/University of New York Press. Hall, P. (2000) ‘Creative cities and economic development’, Urban Studies, 37 (4), pp. 639–649. Halter, M. (2000) Shopping for Identity. The Marketing of Ethnicity, New York: Schocken Books. Harvey, D. (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell. Heek, F. van (1936) Chineesche Immigranten in Nederland, Amsterdam: J. Emmering’s Uitgevers Mij. Henry, N.; C. McEwan and J. Pollard (2000) Globalisation from below. Birmingham – Postcolonial Workshop of the World, Unpublished manuscript. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, School of Geography and Environmental Sciences. Hope, C. A. and M. S. Klemm (2001) ‘Tourism in difficult areas revisited. The case of Bradford’, Tourism Management, 22, pp. 629–635. Kearns, G. and C. Philo (Eds) (1993) Selling Places. The City as Cultural Capital Past and Present, Oxford: Pergamon Press. Kloosterman, R.; J. van der Leun and J. Rath (1999) ‘Mixed embeddedness. (In)formal economic activities and immigrant business in the Netherlands’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 23 (2), June, pp. 253–267. —— and J. Rath (2003) Immigrant Entrepreneurs. Venturing Abroad in the Age of Globalization, Oxford/New York: Berg/University of New York Press. —— and J. Rath (2001) ‘Immigrant entrepreneurs in advanced economies. Mixed embeddedness further explored’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Special issue on ‘Immigrant Entrepreneurship’, edited by R. Kloosterman and J. Rath., 27 (2), April, pp. 189–202. Kumcu, A. (2001), De fil en aiguille: Genèse et déclin des ateliers de confections turcs d’Amsterdam, Amsterdam: Thela Thesis. Light, I. (1972) Ethnic Enterprise in America. Business and Welfare among Chinese, Japanese, and Blacks, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —— and S. J. Gold (2000) Ethnic Economies, San Diego, CA: Academic Press. —— and C. Rosenstein (1995) Race, Ethnicity, and Entrepreneurship in Urban America, New York: Aldine de Gruyter. —— and C. C. Wong (1975) ‘Protest or work. Dilemmas of the Tourist Industry in American Chinatowns’, American Journal of Sociology, 80 (6), May, pp. 1342–1368. Lin, J. (1998) Reconstructing Chinatown. Ethnic Enclave, Global Change, Minneapolis and Globalization and Community, Volume 2, London: University of Minnesota Press. Ma Mung, E. (2001) Public policy and institutional context of immigrant businesses in France, Paper presented at the Working on the Fringes conference on ‘Public policy and the institutional context of immigrant businesses’, Liverpool, March 22–25.
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Metcalf, H.; T. Modood and S. Virdee (1996) Asian self-employment. The interaction of culture and economics in England, London: Policy Studies Institute. Mitchell, K. (1993). ‘Multiculturalism, or the united colors of capitalism’, Antipode, 25 (4), pp. 263–294. Morokvasic, M. (1993) ‘Immigrants in garment production in Paris and Berlin’, pp. 75–96 in I. Light and P. Bhachu (Eds), Immigration and Entrepreneurship. Culture, Capital, and Ethnic Networks, New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers. Morris, M. (1995) ‘Life as a tourist object in Australia’, pp. 177–191 in M.-F. Lanfant; J. B. Allcock; E. M. Bruner (Eds), International Tourism. Identity and Change, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage Publications. Narayan, U. (1995), ‘Eating cultures. Incorporation, identity and Indian food’, Social Identities 1 (1), pp. 63–86. Parker Talwar, J. (2002) Fast Food, Fast Track. Immigrants, Big Business, and the American Dream, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Pine, B. J. and J. H. Gilmore (1999) The Experience Economy. Work is Theatre and Every Business is a Stage, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Ram, M. (1993) Managing to Survive. Working Lives in Small Firms, Oxford: Blackwell. Rath, J. (Ed.) (2002a) ‘Needle Games: A Discussion of Mixed Embeddedness’, pp. 1–28 in: J. Rath (ed.), Unravelling the Rag Trade. Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Seven World Cities, Oxford/New York: Berg/University of New York Press. —— (ed.) (2002b) Unravelling the Rag Trade. Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Seven World Cities, Oxford/New York: Berg/University of New York Press. —— (2000) Immigrant Businesses: The Economic, Political and Social Environment, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Macmillan Press and St Martin’s Press. —— and R. Kloosterman (2000) ‘Outsiders’ business. A critical review of research on immigrant entrepreneurship’, International Migration Review, 34 (3), Fall, pp. 657–681. Rifkin, J. (2000) The Age of Access. The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life is a Paid-for Experience, New York: Jeremy O. Tarcher/Putnam. Saxenian, A. (1999) Silicon Valley’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs, San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California. Selwyn T. (ed.) (1996) The Tourist Image. Myths and Myth Making in Tourism, Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. Sorkin, M. (ed.) (1992) Variations on a Theme park. The New American City and the End of Public Space, New York: Hill & Wang. Tak, H. (1996) ‘Antilliaans Zomercarnaval in Nederland’, Migrantenstudies, Themanummer ‘Kunst en populaire cultuur’ edited by R. Kloosterman and J. Rath, 12 (4), pp. 222–238. Valle, V. M. and R. D. Torres (2000) ‘Mexican cuisine. Food as culture’, pp. 67–99 in V. M. Valle and R. D. Torres, Latino Metropolis, Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press. Waldinger, R.; R. Aldrich; R. Ward and Associates (1990) Ethnic Entrepreneurs. Immigrant Business in Industrial Societies, Newbury Park: Sage. Webster, F. (2001) ‘Re-inventing place. Birmingham as an information city?’, City, 5 (1), pp. 27–46. Wolf, M. J. (1999) The Entertainment Economy. How Mega-Media Forces Are Transforming Our Lives, New York: Times Books. World Travel & Tourism Council (2001a) Tourism Satellite Accounting Research Year 2001. European Union, London: World Travel & Tourism Council.
Feeding the Festive City 253 —— (2001b) Tourism Satellite Accounting Research Year 2001. World, London: World Travel & Tourism Council. Yoo, J. K. (1998) Korean Immigrant Entrepreneurs. Networks and Ethnic Resources, New York and London: Garland Publishing. Zhang, K. (1999) Problems and Strategies of Chinese Immigrants. A Study of the Restaurant Sector in the Dutch Labour Market, Burnaby, BC: Simon Fraser University, Research on Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis; Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. Zhou, M. (1992) Chinatown. The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Zukin, S., Baskerville, R., Greenberg, M., Guthreau, C., Halley, J., Halling, M., Lawlo, K., Neiro, R., Stack, R., Vitole, A. and Wissinger, B. (1998a) ‘From Coney Island to Las Vegas in the urban imaginary. Discursive practices of growth and decline’, Urban Affairs Review, 33 (5), May, pp. 627–654. —— (1998b) ‘Urban lifestyles: Diversity and standardization in spaces of consumption’, Urban Studies 35(5–6): 825–839. —— (1995) The Cultures of Cities, Cambridge MA and Oxford: Blackwell. —— (1991) Landscapes of Power. From Detroit to Disney World, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Notes 1 This chapter is partly based on discussions and collaborative work with a number of international researchers, including Marilyn Halter (Boston University), David McEvoy (Liverpool John Moores University), Maria Margarida Marques (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Rainer Münz (Humboldt Universität Berlin), Ching Lin Pang (Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism, Brussels), Monder Ram (De Montfort University), Martin Selby (Liverpool John Moores University), and especially with Jock Collins (University of Technology Sydney) and Daniel Hiebert (University of British Columbia). I want to thank these scholars for their contributions. I also want to express my gratitude to the School of Finance and Economics at the University of Technology Sydney and the Dutch Foundation for Scientific Research NWO for co-sponsoring international visitorships that allowed us to meet in Sydney and Amsterdam. Finally, I thank Ewald Engelen (University of Amsterdam) for his comments on an earlier version of this chapter. 2 See for instance http://chinatown.pagina.nl/ for an overview of Chinatown websites. 3 The literature is inconclusive as to the use of concepts such as immigrant entrepreneurship and ethnic entrepreneurship (Cf. Rath, 2002a: 23–24). 4 On 11 December 2001, His Royal Highness Prince Claus of the Netherlands presented the 2001 Prince Claus Award to the Antillean Carnival of Rotterdam. The Carnival organization received this prestigious award because of its contribution to the acceptance of cultural diversity in Dutch society.
Part IV
Conclusion
Conclusions Elspeth Guild
In this project we set out to examine the meaning of the concept of ‘immigrant’ in different fields of expertise. We posed the question: what is the perception of the immigrant as an asset and as a risk in each area? We gave no definition of who is an ‘immigrant’. Thus in order to answer this question, each of our contributors made their own assumptions about who is and who is not an immigrant. Similarly the determination of what is an asset or a risk was left to each expert to define as he or she chose. At the heart of both questions are normative issues.
Who is an Immigrant? Taking the first question, in the relationship of the individual with a society, the categorisation of the individual as an immigrant will have negative consequences on his or her status as a rights holder in comparison with the categorisation of the individual as a citizen. This categorisation will be particularly important in law where the division between non-citizen and citizen is clear. However, in other fields too, the way of categorising the individual is indicative of the degree of belonging that the society permits to him or her. Thus when European social scientists use the concept of a ‘second or third generation immigrant’ it is a code which means something like: a person (who probably holds citizenship of the state) who has been born on the territory of the state and lived there all his or her life and whose parents have been born on the territory of the state (in the case of the so called third generation immigrant) and lived there all their lives but who is still considered by the society to be different in important ways which make the individual less embedded in the society and thus more of a risk. If one takes as the starting point as regards the ‘immigrant’ a person who has moved for an extended period of time to a country other than that of his or her nationality, it is immediately apparent that ‘immigrant’ is a highly heterogeneous category. It will include the Swiss national sent by his or her company for a number of years to work in the UK or Thailand. Similarly it will include the Moroccan national who has taken a little boat across the Mediterranean at night and started working (irregularly) in Spain.1 These two groups are immediately recognisable as faces of the immigrant though they may feel they have nothing in common. If one inverses the
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categorisations – the Moroccan national who is sent by his or her company for a number of years to work in the UK or Thailand and the Swiss national who has slipped irregularly across the border into Russia to work, there is a moment of incomprehension. Of course we know that the second set of situations arise as well but on first reading they are difficult to recognise. The immediate reaction is: what Moroccan company are we speaking about – none comes to mind as the kind of multinational which engages in international relocation; or Swiss nationals do not act like that, they do not need to be irregular as the world embraces them. If we add a context – for instance, the Moroccan works for Coca Cola or the Swiss national works for Medicins sans Frontières and is headed for Chechnya – the situations settle back into the comfort zone of the understandable world. However, while the Moroccan always remains in the imagination an immigrant whether he or she is on the little boat or being sent to the USA or Thailand by a multinational, the Swiss is never an immigrant, not in the UK, Thailand or Russia.
What is a Risk or an Asset? Or a Challenge or an Opportunity? As regards the second question, an even more fundamental normative issue is at stake, which according to some social scientists such as Giddens, is at the heart of the transformation of the modern world. Two concepts are juxtaposed – the risk and the asset. To take the first, risk, we live in a world where the concept of risk is highly contested. Risk is an idea central to economic investment. Taking a risk in a stock market investment means to have an opportunity to gain much or to lose one’s investment. This idea of a risk is inherent in the way people in the Western world in particular make calculations about their lives. Investing in a private pension fund at a time when the stock market is highly volatile is both taking a risk about one future life expectancy and the possible benefits from the market. Because a risk can go either way – provide the individual with a benefit or result in his or her loss – the description of an event (or an individual) as risky imbues it with a normative charge. While we have moved away from a world where financial risk is necessarily associated with moral turpitude, the adjective ‘risky’ retains its negative force. This is all the more true when the idea of risk is attached to an individual. No one likes to be described as ‘risky’. When the word is used about a person what we are saying is that it would be unwise to depend on the individual, he or she is likely to be unreliable. The connotations are always negative. When the individual is no longer described as an individual but rather as a member of a class of people, the allocation of risk to the group has profound consequences. Using the link with the economic world, for instance, people who have declared personal bankruptcy are described as risky. While strictly speaking the group is risky only as regards their financial past, there is a suspicion, not least on the part of financial institutions, that as a group they are a risk to future investment. Nowhere in evidence in this use of the idea of risk is the possibility
Conclusion 259 of gain or advantage. It is purely negative. Again, while strictly speaking the group of individuals who have declared personal bankruptcy are a risk (insofar as they are one at all) in one field – that of financial matters, the stigma of being risky colours the relationships which the individual has with a wide variety of other social actors where financial investment is not central. For instance, there is often personal shame within the family. There may be social disapproval for the family members of the bankrupt, for instance his or her children may be taunted in school. The equation is clear – financial failure equals future risk in many areas. The individual is not reliable as he or she belongs to a group which is risky. How the individual deals with this categorisation of risk can be highly complex: common strategies are to deny identity with the group (I am not a [ ]) or to face the accuser ‘we are not like that’. However, the social construction of the group as a risk means that any individual who comes within the group must face the consequences of an automatic assumption that he or she is untrustworthy. Asset is similarly charged with normative content. In economic terms an asset is something determined which will provide or equals value. If one calculates one’s assets one only includes things which belong to one and of which one is certain. The risky allocation of assets and liabilities has been at the heart of the great financial scandals of the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twentyfirst centuries such as Enron, Worldcom, Parmalat, etc. Our understanding of these financial failures as scandals indicates our acceptance of the principle of asset as secure and debt as something to be assessed against the value of the asset. Just as risk has both a financial meaning and a social one so asset has come to be used in many situations which are not overtly financial. A person can be an asset in a social setting – this will mean that the group will benefit from the presence of the individual according to a scale of values which the group shares. However, the concept of an asset shares, with that of risk, an inherent instability. In the financial world, an asset can appreciate or depreciate. Its value can fluctuate. When the word is used in a social context it retains this element of instability: a characteristic, which is considered an asset in one setting, may be a liability in another. The enduring popularity across the Western world of the musical comedy My Fair Lady evidences this potential transformation of assets into liabilities. Professor Higgins transforms Eliza’s accent into one which is an asset in one class setting, but her new accent becomes a liability in another class setting, that from whence she came. Just as the ideas of ‘immigrant’ and ‘risk’ are constructed by the context so too is ‘asset’. As Hollywood movies have been explaining to us for the better half of a century, a wife can be an asset when she is young and wealthy but a liability some years down the road. While the construction of the wife in the movies tends to indicate that she has changed, sometimes a rather more common situation is also shown: it is the social milieu of the family which has changed. What I am seeking to highlight here is the inherent instability of the value of an asset. It is the social setting which determines the value and time will change that value. So long as the asset remains something which can be counted and determined as an object, it remains liable to the assessment of its value.
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An asset is something which brings value to its owner (or in the social setting to the social group). It is the opposite of a liability. However it is an unstable characteristic which can be transformed into a liability by the mere passage of time or a slight change of circumstances.
Immigrant, Risk and Asset If we return to the unstable concept of the immigrant, it is worth remembering that some people are more easily classified as immigrants than others irrespective of the objective similarity of their situation. I would remind you of the examples of the Moroccan and Swiss above. There is also instability as to when an immigrant ceases to be such and becomes part of the host community. It is clear that this point is not necessarily related to the acquisition of formal citizenship (especially for those who are born citizens to parents who came from elsewhere). When we add the concept of risk we will have immediately a negative characteristic which attaches itself to everyone in the group. In applying the concept of an asset to ‘immigrant’ there is the implied idea that the immigrant adds value to the society, he or she somehow enriches it in a way which is apparent to and accepted by the host community. It also encompasses the idea that the immigrant remains separate and assessable. Over time, his or her contribution to the community can be assessed and a valuation made as to whether he or she is still an asset or not. For this to be the case, it must be accepted that there are a series of benchmarks or other assessment tests applied in a consistent manner and social agreed which determine the value of the individual. How can assessment take place when individuals (or immigrants, which by definition is heterogeneous) become part of the group? Is there a profit and loss account where the asset which some immigrants represent are balanced against the liability that other immigrants represent? In this construction of the immigrant, the possibility of an Enron/Worldcom/Parmalat style scandal is always present. By representing immigrants as either risks or assets or both, they become separated from the body of the society and subject to differential treatment as regards their value. If we change the words used to challenge or opportunity, do we really change the meaning of the terms? In my view the derogatory still applies to the concept of a person or group as a challenge; the smell of exploitation still applies to the idea of a person or group as an opportunity.
Political and Legal Construction of Immigrants In light of this rather harsh perspective on this book project, it is now time to turn to the chapters, written by experts in many different fields of activity. How do they deal with the inherent injustice of a social construction of immigrants as homogeneous, risky and an unstable asset at best? The book is divided into three sections – first is a consideration of the political and legal construction of immigrants. Five chapters consider respectively, regional security, legal systems,
Conclusion 261 human rights, ‘abnormal aliens’ after September 11, 2001 and electoral counterweights. The first, my co-editor, Joanne van Selm struggles with the issue of migration from the perspective of its relationship with the international border. The ‘harder’ the border is, the more visible the act of movement across it becomes. Those who cross the border are defined in law and social reality as ‘immigrants’ capable of assessment. Only when they form a discernible group in relation to the crossing of the border can they become frozen into a risk-asset scenario. When the international border is no longer a place, which defines the identity of the person crossing it, as for instance in respect of movement across EU border by nationals of the member states, the individual is no longer defined as part of an immigrant group identity. He or she then escapes the assessment of the group as a risk or an asset. In the second chapter in this section, Bhabha examines the impact of immigrant on the legal systems of Western states. The struggles of immigrants for rights have been intense because the legal separation of immigrants from citizens is designed to ensure that the former do not enjoy the same extensive rights as the latter. While the citizen will, by definition, enjoy those rights contained in the constitution this is not self evident for the foreigner. As a result immigrants have often challenged official interpretations of rights before the courts and won important safeguards not only for those within the category of non-citizen but also for citizens. Further, the concerns and issues, which migrants bring with them to their host country, force the legal system to face situations which were not anticipated in the law. The ‘outside’ as Abdelmalek Sayad describes it, comes ‘inside’. As conflicts of values find their way before the judicial systems of Western states there is a spillover effect. The whole society benefits from the dialogue within the legal system about values, rights and the role of the state. Kjaerum, in the third chapter, considers the relationship of human rights and immigrants. The image of the immigrant as the barbarian (forcing their children to marry foreigners – usually related – who will become yet more immigrants) is juxtaposed against the secular state and the question of religious symbols worn in school such as crosses, calottes or (and the real issue) girls’ headscarves. He plots the development of human rights through international treaties in particular following the Second World War. While most people agree that human rights set out in international treaties which have been ratified by the majority of countries in the world form a universal floor of rights which must be guaranteed to all persons whether citizens or not, what is less clear is where the balancing between rights should take place. Of the three examples, which he deals with, forced marriage, protection from persecution and headscarves as religious symbols the clearest is that of protection. Because the imperative to protect the individual from return to a country where be or she would suffer torture or persecution is as near to absolute as is possible in international law, the issue of human rights and the immigrant likely to suffer torture or persecution will only enter into conflict on the facts of the individual case. Is this individual really likely to suffer the treatment claimed if expelled? When we come to the areas of forced marriages and headscarves the issues become more complex. Both issues
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are primarily about the agency of women – it is women who are primarily the objects of concern regarding forced marriages; it is women’s headscarves which are the source of tension in the secular state. Both issues raise the question: to what extent are women being coerced into certain behaviour by their families or to what extent are they expressing their own agency in their choices? The duty of the state in international human rights law to protect women from being forced into marriage against their will by their families while at the same time protecting women’s personal choices regarding marriage (and obedience to their family) is by no means straightforward. The separation of the individual from the group ‘immigrants’ is at the core of the problem. To what extent is the state entitled or indeed obliged to privilege its preference regarding the marriage choices of young women, that they marry the young men they have met in school, rather than the preference of the women’s families that they marry young men from the village in their country of origin? The young woman’s wishes become the battleground of human rights claims on both sides. While some cases will clearly fall on one side of the line or the other, there will always be a middle space which is defined as widely or narrowly as the host society may determine. The same issue arises as regards the headscarf where, rather more symbolically, the woman’s body becomes the site of human rights charges and counter-charges. Kjaerum uses the dichotomy of respect and protection, both duties imposed on the state by human rights commitments, to examine the question of illiberal practices at the heart of the liberal state. In the fourth chapter Bigo focuses on this theme of the illiberal practices at the heart of the liberal state when he examines the construction of the new ‘enemy’ the abnormal alien after September 11, 2001. He plots the transformation of the media image of the immigrant as someone who is happy to be coming to the state to one seen through the prism of a construction of the host state – what British judges used to call the man on the Clapham omnibus – a constructed individual in the heart of the society. From this perspective the arrival of anyone is by definition risky. It is a short step from there to threat and the immigrant as someone who needs to be confined so as not to threaten the host community. This framing of the immigrant finds its institution at home primarily in interior ministries whose policing job is about finding the ‘bad eggs’ and doing something about them. Strategic thinking, on the other hand, is the home of defence ministries which have developed over the past 50 years in a context of a clear enemy – the Communist threat. While differences appeared between Western states about the extent, immanence and exact nature of the threat, the enemy was clearly definable. The infiltrated enemy was the problem of the intelligence services structured in the Cold War context. Even the early post Cold War period refugee crisis, too often presented as ‘them’ coming to Europe to steal our welfare benefits, did not have a substantial impact on this perception of threat in defence circles. September 11, 2001, however, did have a profound effect. Bigo outlines the immediate and important changes which occurred in both the USA and Europe following the September 11, 2001 attacks. The most significant for his purposes here is the transformation of the
Conclusion 263 image of the foreigner-enemy from that of the traditional spy or traitor, part of a small group of professionals more or less known to one another, to the enemy within. Here he looks at the history of the USA with the concept of the enemy within, in particular the societal difficulties which the McCarthy era of searching for the enemy within created. Illustrating both the inadequacies of the Clausewitzian and Schmittian approaches to the enemy for this ‘battle’ he notes the importance of structuring the enemy as an enemy within the territory rather than an enemy within society. The difference will permit a society to search for the enemy among the foreigners rather than look for the enemy within the citizen. With some important exceptions this appears to be the nature of the enemy in the post September 11, 2001 period. The enemy is, however, individual by definition. He or she is not a state or a state like organisation. He or she is linked through an elusive network bound by a faith based in being an enemy. The enemy describes himself as an enemy which is the means by which he can be identified. The result of the individualisation of the enemy and the placement of the enemy as among foreigners has two consequences. First, geopolitically, the foreigner must be confronted among those populations where he is likely to be found, the countries which US President Bush has designated the axis of evil. This is the job of the defence department. Second, the enemy must be countered within the territory, this is the job of interior ministry in the form of the police. Into this matrix of protection against the ‘invisible enemy’, another imperative has become apparent. While September 11, 2001 resulted in the deaths of almost 3,000 persons on US soil, increasingly often we are told that there is a risk that the next attack will involve 300,000 or indeed 3 million in the event of a dirty atomic bomb carried in someone’s backpack. This imperative of the exponential justifies exceptional measures to prevent future attacks. Because of the seriousness of the risk presented by the abnormal alien, there is a need to collect ever more information in the form of databases, ever more profiling to anticipate the individual and prevent the attack before it arrives. This, Bigo calls the astrology of the war against terrorism. The transformation of the image of the foreigner into the abnormal alien goes hand in hand with the removal of civil liberties protections (indeed in some cases human rights protections) on the basis of the future risk of the current threat which he presents. In the final chapter of this section Money examines electoral politics from the perspective of the immigrant. She starts by asking why extreme right parties have gained support in advanced market economies. The common explanation in Europe has been either that the changing socio-economic environment has created insecurity which has privileged parties, which promise greater security against foreigners and immigrants who represent change, or that the disintegration of political parties has created a vacuum which has been filled increasingly by extremist parties. In comparing this European perspective to New World electoral politics, Money notes that access to citizenship is only part of the key to immigrant representation. She examines the mechanisms by which political parties are constrained to accept or permitted to reject ‘immigrants’ looking at issues such as the size of the group, ability to participate in the political system,
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degree of politicisation and ability to act as swing voters. She then considers the constraints on extreme right-wing parties and concludes that they have many fewer restraints as regards an anti-immigrant discourse. Taking France and Australia as her examples, she examines ease of access to citizenship and the take up rates. She concludes that immigrant voters work to dampen anti-immigrant rhetoric and the ability of extreme right to tap anti-immigrant sentiment. In light of the rapidly changing situations in both countries make it very interesting to follow up this research with further work in the field. Among the issues which stand out is a need to understand better how identity as a group among immigrants and between immigrant groups works. The more ‘immigrants’ disappear into the host community the less likely they are to have measurable effects on the electoral choices of the host community. The pressures which cause immigrants to disappear or to recreate a separate collective identity in the host state may also require consideration at some point in this debate which Money is opening. At the end of the first section then, among the most important considerations which touch all of the chapters is that of the degree to which the host community seeks to construct the newcomer as an immigrant or not and the purposes to which this construction are put. That some foreigners will be constructed as ‘immigrants’ is common to all the chapters. Similarly resistance to that construction is central to all of the considerations – whether in the form of legal battles against exclusion or electoral voting patterns. As regards the sociology of naming the immigrant as the threat, Bigo provides some guidance on the mechanisms by which this takes place and the convergence of circumstances which render this an option for some societies. This section leaves the reader prepared for the next section which considers the cultural and identity issues around the normative description of the immigrant.
Culture and Identity In a series of four chapters we seek, in this section, to address the question of the engagement of issues of culture and identity with immigrants and the allocation of values within societies. In the first chapter, I examine the question of immigrants and their effect on national culture and identity in Europe. Using Ernest Gellner and Giorgio Agamben as guides, I challenge the notion of nationalism as an essential element of culture. The appeal of extreme right views against immigrants is often placed at the feet of nationalism as a normal and essential element of societies. However, is it necessary to accept that nationalism is normal? Considering the body of information available this is in dispute. Taking the example of the European Union, a migrant from one member state who takes up residence in another member state is protected from being categorised as an ‘immigrant’, someone who is the object to the discussion of difference, identity rights and integration into the host community. The use of the call for protection of national identity is too often the refuge of the extreme right, which seeks to fix national culture as something buried in the past and unchanging. Those who call for protection of national identity rarely mean protection of the
Conclusion 265 lifestyles of new age travellers and ageing hippies but rather make reference to a vision of the middle class nuclear family living in a semi rural environment. Very specific lifestyles are protected in this discourse to the exclusion of others which are deprived of legitimacy in the process. The diversity within societies, which is the evidence of living culture, is the first victim of the European discourse on protection of cultural values. The development of a supranational identity in Europe based on human rights which apply to all persons on the territory rather than civil rights which can be limited to the citizen provides an interesting perspective on the issue of the immigrant, culture and identity. Bralo and Morrison, in the second chapter of this section examine the relationship of immigrants, refugees and racism. They describe the demonisation of asylum seekers in Europe and the creation of a false, in their view, sense of crisis about the foreigners who seek to become immigrants. They challenge this debate as opposed to and in contradiction with another dominant value structure in Europe – that of universal human rights. The complicity of the media, mainstream political, religious and business leaders and in the anti-immigrant discourse is the subject of substantial examination. They then consider the experiences from the USA as regards to how the debate on racism in Europe has been framed. Considering the discussion around measures such as Proposition 187 in California (which proposed the exclusion of undocumented migrants from all social benefits) they suggest that the USA has passed through the period of severe racism and moved into an arena where a positive discussion on immigration is now possible. They consider that there is much Europe can learn from this experience. Europe must deal with its not so latent racism before it can engage in a positive discussion on immigrant. Here, they too focus on the centrality of human rights as the medium through which European society must pass in order to arrive at a more open society capable of coming to terms with newcomers. In the third chapter of this section, Forbes Martin looks at the question of immigrants and language from the perspective of the US experience. She plots the history of language competition in the early history of the USA. Two language issues are passed over in silence: Aboriginal languages and French in particular in Quebec. The choice on which she focuses at the start is between English and German as languages choices for eighteenth-century USA. The concept of choice as an option for a state as regards language strikes the European reader as original. The idea that language is not a fundamental element of national identity but is open to essential change is challenging in the European framework. Forbes Martin continues her examination of the effects of migration on the dominant language, following the struggles of new entrants to the USA to learn English, the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion which are activated around the issue of language and the recourse to the courts but immigrants to seek participation. What is most surprising about the chapter is how overwhelmingly successful the domination of the official language has been. She notes that retention of second languages in the USA has become the exception to the rule of monolingualism no doubt encouraged by the size and preponderance
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of the US economy internationally. The importance of language as the primary identifier of national culture is challenged by the fact that English is in fact the language of a number of countries and is not a homegrown product of the USA. This lack of originality has not, however, proven an obstacle to the positioning of language as the central element of integration in US public discourse. In the final chapter of this section, Bowers considers the transformative effects of migration on literature. She takes as her example English language literature as it moves around the world. Her particular interest is in the interplay between South Asian English language literature and that of other parts of the world. While she notes the contradiction in speaking of English language literature as ‘native’ in places like Canada where strictly speaking only literature in First Nations languages could properly be called native, the foreignness of English to the Asian subcontinent is surprising. What she examines is the mechanism of transformation of identity, more specifically national identity through literature. The disputed claim of different countries to successful authors as national authors indicates the openness of the Western societies of which she is mainly speaking, to cultural transformation by their immigrant communities. The role of literature in the form of the novel, in particular, as an intrinsic part of the daily culture of difference societies is highly variable. While in many European countries a test of the reading public preferences on public transport reveals a high proportion of recent literature in the form of the novel, the same is less true in the USA. The impact of the novel on societies as a cultural artefact remains also embedded in cultural specificity.
Economic and Personal In the third and final part of this book are five chapters which look at the economic and personal considerations around the construction of the ‘immigrant’. In the first, Geddes examines the relationship of immigrants with the welfare state in Europe. He identifies two key conflicting political issues in the field – the inability of European states to reach a consensus on what is desirable immigration, who are the immigrants they want and the changing nature of the welfare state in Europe. While the two are independent of one another, the debates, in particular far right discourse, are easily interconnected. The arguments against ‘immigrants’ are often justified on the basis of the ‘burden’ which they represent for the welfare state. Notwithstanding the multiplicity of welfare state models in Europe, of which Geddes identifies three all in states of flux, convergence in some areas and divergence in others, the immigrant debate can be used in any of them as a code for exclusion. In this field, the immigrant is defined by nationalist rhetoric around access to welfare benefits. The immigrant should be the person excluded from welfare benefits, the national is the person who belongs and should have access. This simplistic formula is confounded by the increasing dominance of contribution-based welfare. However, it provides an equally simplistic formula for determining who the real immigrants are – i.e. those who are unwanted. They are those who have access to welfare benefits.
Conclusion 267 Arguments, which are based on cost benefit analyses of immigration, are by definition suspect as they hide the more fundamental issues about belonging within a society and attempts to legitimate social exclusion of parts of society. In the second chapter in this section, Poore considers the relationship between movement of persons and health. He notes that legal definitions of migrants, immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers or internally displaced persons, which may serve all sorts of political or legal interests, are useless from the perspective of examining health questions. The starting point must be that movement is normal. Interaction among people is fundamentally healthy as it increases (or increases the possibility of) mutual understanding, tolerance, knowledge, interdependency and development. Health and the factors which affect health are highly diverse and socially constructed. What may, in one society or by one person, be considered acceptable health may be considered inadequate in another. The variety of factors which influence health are also enormous – age, gender, genetics, social status and wealth being only some of them. At the point of intersection of movement of persons and health is first and foremost the fear of infectious disease. Nevertheless, our understanding of what is infectious disease is imperfect. The mechanisms of transmission – coughing, water, animals, sexual activity – are as diverse as our ability (or lack thereof) to monitor them. But within the idea of monitoring is inherent the choice of whom to monitor. The susceptibility of the individual to disease is also variable, affected by as many different factors as the communication of the disease. The challenges of movement and health encompass the individual and his or her exposure to health risks, the community which may be exposed to or contain a specific health risk, economic issues about the allocation of health services particularly where these are rationed and for refugees in particular, the psychological consequences of the past and present. After examining who moves, Poore turns to one of the issues which has arisen over and over again in the contributions – migration and poverty. Any attempt to discuss movement and health without dealing with the central issue of poverty as a cause of ill health (and a consequence) and as a motivating factor in migration is doomed to be incomplete. In order to confront the potentially political force of the intersection of migration, poverty and health, Poore finishes with an eleven-point action plan for the future. He is most persuasive in providing the policy maker with tools to bring greater harmony into this field by addressing the fundamental structural problems which lead to friction. Schoenholtz looks at the question of homeownership for immigrants in the next chapter in this section. He starts from a rather normative US perspective that homeownership is a high priority for immigrants and a commercial advantage for the host community. This perspective reflects the US experience of long stay migration as opposed to much of European migration which is shorter stay. In the EU experience, pendel migration where the individual remains based in his or her home state and moves for fairly short periods of time regularly to the state of employment is increasingly common. The attachment of the immigrant to the territory by means of debt for housing may be an advantage for the
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immigrant in circumstances where the value of the property increases and the increased value is realisable to the individual or family. However, it may also be highly disadvantageous as when immigrants are persuaded to purchase property in dying communities at high prices thus tying themselves to the territory and into sometimes unsustainable debt levels. He considers the interface between the various institutions which engage in the management of homeownership for immigrants, including the interests for financial institutions, employers and others such as builders in engaging immigrants in the housing market. He points out as problematic the circumstances where immigrants rely on persons within their own cultural community to provide the mechanism for homeownership rather than seeking services from the host community. These divisions leave a number of questions unanswered about the nature of social and economic insertion and the relationship of new communities to older ones in the allocation of housing resources. This chapter also raises important questions about the interest in moving or stopping which different parts of communities exhibit. The fourth chapter in this section examines the relationship of the immigrant to food, one of the most central expressions of culture. Thompson considers what she calls the digestible form of multiculturalism and the negotiation of public and private space in the culturally diverse Australian city, Sydney. The designation of edible and inedible are highly normative reflecting social constructions of acceptable and inadmissible behaviour in communities. How, when and with whom to eat what are social signifiers about insiders and outsiders. The renegotiation of rules on food is a fertile ground for examining the meaning of multiculturalism. As new communities came to Sydney they brought their food and food preparation techniques with them. Their struggles to find suppliers, establish sources of specific ingredients and negotiate regulatory structures hostile to them have stimulated a discussion with the host community regarding values. The strategy of valorisation of diversity of food culture in Sydney is expressed in the numerous guide books, restaurant guides, radio and television broadcasts which boast about the breadth of choice for the consumer in the city. The ease with which immigrant communities have succeeded in inserting their food cultures into this framework is premised on the assumption that ‘before’ (meaning before the British food culture) there was nothing. The chapter recounts the successful accommodation of Greek, Vietnamese, Korean and other cooking and consumption habits in Sydney. But the unspoken given is that this accommodation is into an Anglo Australian norm characterised by the meat pie. Aboriginal food does not appear. It is not the norm into which others must find their place. One is left with the suspicion that Aboriginal food and food techniques have been defined out of the concept of food – they are the ‘real’ indigestible. One of the important aspects on which Thompson reflects is the role of women both in the definition of what is edible and the cultural continuity of the modes of preparation and consumption. When preparation and consumption leave the cultural space of the home they may also leave the control of women. The commodification of food as ethnic can also be gendered, marking a point of economic transformation as well.
Conclusion 269 In the next chapter in this section, Rath examines the commodification of cultural features and the consequence for the social construction of immigrants. Using the example of Chinese New Year in Western cities as a major tourist event, he challenges the view that commodification is invariably negative. He seeks to demonstrate that in some circumstances it can be a mechanism of inclusion, permitting members of communities to participate in the local economy though a valorisation of cultural characteristics. Having regard to the work on social embeddedness, he examines entrepreneurship in communities and the consequences as regards interaction between communities. In light of the increasing importance of the tourist and leisure industries, he examines how the expectations of the consumer and the entrepreneurial approaches of the provider of services lead to settlements which may have little to do with the genuineness of cultural artefacts but much to do with interaction. He points out the transformation of Western economies from manufacturing to informational includes a dimension beyond that of goods which he calls experiences – the purchase of experiences as part of the economic transformation of the Western world. Into this framework, remaining an immigrant rather than disappearing into the host community can be a strategy for successful economic insertion. Without oversimplifying the substantial issues about cultural imperialism or fossilisation of urban landscapes he argues that this transformation of Western societies deserves greater attention as a mechanism of social and economic integration.
Some Final Reflections This collection covers a very wide range of issues and fields in which social inclusion and exclusion are negotiated by reference to a political designation of individuals (and groups) as newcomers or belongers. The allocation of the term ‘immigrant’ to an individual or a group is a means by which the target is differentiated from the wider group. If one considers the Australian or US examples, the fact that the majority group may have moved to and conquered the territory and inhabitants only a few generations previously makes only a quantitative difference to the meaning of the category. Qualitatively the same function of exclusion and inclusion is at work in the deployment of the term ‘immigrant’. By defining an individual or a group as ‘immigrant’ the host community appropriates the right to judge whether the ‘immigrant’ is an asset or a risk. Diversity within the host community is normalised by reference to a ‘real’ diversity which the immigrant represents. The host community then appropriates the right to accept or reject the group or some of its characteristics. However, diversity within host communities can find expression in challenging the dominant discourse through alliances with immigrants as individuals or groups. Parts of the host community may express solidarity with those categorised as immigrants thereby unbalancing dominant social settlements, leading to the re-negotiation of rights, norms and definitions of belonging.
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Notes 1 For US audiences this may be more comprehensible if one thinks in terms of a Canadian national being sent to work in the USA by his or her company and a Mexican national swimming across the Rio Grande. The principle seems to be the same as regards the way in which the categories work.
Index
9/11 (post-9/11 world/era) 1, 15, 18, 35, 39, 40, 42, 51, 55, 63, 66–69, 71, 74, 76–78, 261–263 Aboriginal (Australian) 88, 92–94, 268 Action Plan for Creating a Secure and Smart Border (30 points, US–Canada) 15 Adopted children 181 Afghanistan (Afghans) 21, 24, 32, 39, 55, 69, 70, 75, 77, 181, 182 Africa (African States) 24, 54, 180, 181, 192 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981) 53 Agamden, Giorgio 106, 107, 108, 110 Age-structure change 115 Ageing 114, 115, 161, 167 AIDS (HIV) 35, 36, 176, 178, 180 Al Qaeda (Terrorist group of Osama Bin Laden) 40, 70, 71, 74, 76 Albania (Albanians) 114 Algeria (Algerian) 88 American, or Know–Nothing Party 133 American Civil Liberties Union 140 American Convention on Human Rights (1969) 53 American Dream 138, 196, 213 American identity and culture 130, 131, 143, 144 American Philosophical Society 131 American Revolution 130 American society 129 Americanization (movement) 138, 139, 141 Amnesty International 54, 55
Angola 182 Annan, Kofi 123 Anthrax crisis 72 Anti-immigrant lobby 169 Anti-immigrant parties (see also extreme right political parties) 101 Anti-immigrant sentiment (see also extreme right political parties) 93, 96, 264 Anti-racism legislation 56 Anti-Semitism 51 Anti-terror–legislation 56 Arab (Arabic, see also Islam) 69, 72, 226, 228 Arbitrary detention 54 Arkansas 191, 201–213 ASEAN (Organisation of Asian countries) 16 Asia 16, 24, 33, 148, 153, 155, 180, 181, 191, 192, 194, 198, 223, 224, 227, 229, 231, 238, 247, 266 Asian Americans in the US 125, 139 Asian fiancées 30 Assimilation 103, 120, 138, 143, 149, 151 Asylum, right to seek 56 Asylum law 32 Asylum problem of Europe 119 Asylum seekers 181 Asylum shopping 21 Asylum system 32, 104, 113, 119 Aufwiedersehen Pet, British TV series 1980s 15 Australia (Australians) 11, 23, 24, 32, 82–85, 88– 96, 103, 217, 221, 223, 224, 226, 227, 229, 232, 233, 240, 246, 248, 264, 268, 269 Australian Labour Party (ALP) 91, 92, 94
272
Index
Austria (Austrians) 43, 242 Authoritarianism 83, 84, 91 Autonomy, personal 53, 57 Axis of evil 70, 71 Axis of good 71 Bali (Indonesian island) 75 Balibar, Étienne 42 Balkans, conflicts in the 12, 21, 52, 54, 76 Barbarian (Barbaric) 37, 261 Barriers 18, 54, 185 Bauman, A. 104 Beck, Ulrich 67 Belgium (Belgian) 88, 109, 130 Benjamin, Walter 149 Berlin 122, 245, 246 Bern Initiative 124 Bhabha, Homi 149, 155 Bilingualism 132, 140, 142–144 Bin Laden, Osama 70 Biological weapons 72 Bipolarity 65, 69 Bissoondath, Neil 153 Blair, Tony 74, 110, 113, 122 Blunkett, David 103 Bombay 150–152 Borjas, George 29 Bosnia-Herzegovina (Bosnians) 21, 22, 126, 182 Bossi, Umberto 43 Boxtel, Roger van 170 Bradford 247 Brimelow, Peter 29 British National Party (BNP, British extreme right political party) 113, 114 Brobeck, Stephen 196 Brown, Willie 122, 125 BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis/ Creutzfeldt–Jacob disease: vCJD) 177 Burundi 181 Bush, George 67, 75, 119 Business leaders 28, 123, 126, 137, 144, 265 Business, (Corporate) voice of the 124, 125, 135, 136, 138 California 125, 142 Canada (Canadians) 23, 24, 35, 41, 56, 84, 103, 126, 147, 148, 152–155, 227, 242, 246, 266
Canada (relationship with US) 14–17, 20, 54, 192 Canada Bill C-93 153 Canada–US Partnership Process 20 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom 35 Caribbean 148 Castro, Fidel 23 Catholic 38, 122, 133 Ceyhan, Ayse 72 Chechnya (Chechen) 183 Chicago 138, 194 Children 33, 34, 37, 38, 142–144, 147, 150, 165, 178, 181, 185, 196, 226, 229, 261 China (Chinese) 17, 32, 33, 41, 66, 69, 125, 222–224, 227, 230, 238, 239, 246, 247, 269 Chirac, Jacques 39 Christian (symbols/European societies) 52, 60, 61, 123, 261 Christian Heritage 115 Christian values 127 CIA (US, see intelligent services) 67 Citizenship 41, 106, 165, 257, 260, 263, 264 Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) 126 Citizenship of the EU 12 Citizenship on the basis of language and literacy requirements US 136 Citizenship through armed service in the US military 11 Civil liberties 68, 74, 75, 78, 263, 265 Civil Rights Act of 1964 US 142 Civil War (US) 133 Civilisation 22, 69, 74, 127 Clark, Wesley 71 Clash of civilisations 120 Clausewitzian strategy 72, 263 Clinton, Bill 122, 125 Club of the Hague one the future of international refugee and migration policy 125 Cold War (post-Cold War era) 21, 22, 54, 65, 116, 262 Cole, David 40 Coleman, David 115 Colombia (Colombian) 182 Commonwealth 77
Index 273 Communism 23, 66, 71, 262 Communitarian 41 Congo, Democratic Republic of 182 Congress US 134–136, 142 Conrad, Joseph 152 Conseil d'Etat France 38 Conservatives, British Tories 113, 114, 163 Constituency systems 86 Consumer Federation US 196 Contentment (migration viewed with) 11, 25 Convention against Torture (CAT) (1984) 53 Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (1979) 53 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) 53 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (1989) 53 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) 21, 53, 54 Cooperation and Development 11 Corporatism 163 Corsica (French island) 92, 95 Cosmopolitan (expansion) 42, 45, 88, 152, 154, 217, 221–223 Crime 66, 69, 137 Criminal 19, 32, 42, 43, 89, 109 Croatia (Croatians) 21 Cross-cultural 147, 149, 152–154, 230 Cuba (Cubans) 23 Cultural broker (in housing immigrants) 199, 214 Cultural context 148 Cultural defense 30, 33 Cultural differences 32, 33, 64, 69, 103, 149, 179, 222, 226, 234, 266 Cultural diversity 129, 151, 154, 174, 217, 222–224, 226, 227, 243–246, 249 Cultural ethnicity 64 Cultural exchange 233, 234 Cultural fusion 152, 184, 218, 233 Cultural heritage 219, 232 Cultural identity 64, 101–103, 106, 111, 121, 170, 171, 220, 264, 265 Cultural inclusion 101 Cultural information 33 Cultural norms 58
Cultural particularities 41 Cultural racism 117, 120, 122, 127 Cultural rights 127 Culturalist terms 32 Culture 30, 101, 133, 135, 149, 151, 153, 154, 161, 175, 228, 264, 268, 269 Culture parasitic 224 Danish People’s Party (Danish extreme right political party) 164 Davos World Economic Forum 28 Death penalty (US) 35 Debray, Régis 65 Democracy (democratisation) 43, 61–2, 65, 69 Democratic self-image 41 Democrats (US political party) 71, 125 Demographics, changing (see ageing) 114, 121, 125, 159, 161, 166, 191 Denationalising democracy 29, 41 Denmark (Danish) 18, 56, 58, 61, 101, 106, 161, 164 Deportation 38 Desai, Anita 154 Dillingham Commission 134 Direction de la Surveillance de Territoire, La (DST) (France, see intelligent services) 77 Discontentment (migration viewed with) 11, 25 Discrimination 41, 68, 118 Disease (carrying a contagious) 19, 174–187 Disease transmission 174, 175 Displacement 32 Domestication (of international human rights norms) 29, 44 Drucker, Peter, 120 Dublin Convention 20 Dublin Regulation 20 Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) 119 Eastern European countries 115, 126, 134, 135, 139 Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) 17 Economic migration (see also skilled migrants) 104, 120, 163 Education 131, 132, 137, 138, 142, 143, 175, 182, 183, 185, 186, 191, 193, 194, 196, 197, 200–213
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Egypt 230 Elections (electoral campaigns) 28 Elections (immigrant as group in) 85 Elections (immigrant participation: voters, see also Swing voters and see also Politically significance of immigrants) 82, 84–87, 91, 263 Elementary and Secondary Education Act US 142 Employers (see Business) 201–214 Employment 191, 195 Enlightenment 118, 120, 130 Entrepreneurship 240–250, 269 ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education US 143 Eritrea 182 Esping–Andersen, Gøsta 163, 164, 240 Ethnic conflicts 54, 248 Ethnocentrism 83, 137, 241 EU border–free zone / cross-border migration 24, 25, 168 EU citizenship 12, 110 EU Constitution Draft (2003) 113 EU enlargement 106 EU internal and external borders 12, 13 Eurojust 76 European/EU identity 22, 25, 114, 115, 121, 127 European approach/EU integration (on asylum and immigration policy) 12, 19, 21, 113, 121, 160, 163, 164, 167, 168 European Commission 18, 115, 124 European Convention on Human Rights (1950) 53, 108–110 European Court of Human Rights 34, 35, 109 European Court of Human Rights cases, Ahmut v the Netherlands (Moroccan) 34; Berrehab (Moroccan) 34; Conkas v Belgium (Slovakian Roma) 109; D v UK 35, 45; Sen v the Netherlands (Turkish) 34; Soering (German) 35 Europol 75 Extreme right (political parties) 42, 82–88, 91–93, 96, 101, 113, 114, 116, 119, 120, 164, 263, 264 Fair trial 54–56, 63, 68 Family 137, 153, 154, 162, 165, 169, 174, 182, 183, 196, 214, 218, 268
Family reconciling strategy 57 Family, (barriers for) reunification 58, 59, 63 Family, traditional 62 Fascism 127 FBI 72, 76 Federal Reserve Board US 196 Female circumcision 37, 38, 195 Feminism/gender effects 37–39, 60, 61, 120, 167, 248, 268 Fifth column 71 Finland (Finnish) 105 Ford, Henry 138 Foreign language paper 134 Fortress (mentality) 17 Fortuyn, Pim 43, 119, 120, 123 Founding Fathers 130 Four freedoms of the EU (including freedom of movement persons) 12–14, 105, 106, 163, 167, 168 Fragmentation 66 France (French) 38, 60, 65, 75, 77, 82, 85, 88–93, 95, 96, 101, 105, 117, 124, 166, 169, 195, 227, 242, 264 Franklin, Benjamin 129, 144 Free market liberalism 83, 84 Freedom of religion 39, 60, 61 Freedom of thought 60 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) 107 French Revolution 106 Front National (French extreme right political party) 82, 85, 91–93, 95, 96 Gap between rich and poor (see also poverty) 174, 182–184, 186 Gates, Bill 125 Gellner, Ernest 101, 102, 103, 104, 110 Gender (see feminism) Generation gap 149 Genetic racism 117 Georgia (Georgians) 36 German Federal Constitutional Court 39 Germans in the US 129–134, 144 Germany (German) (EU) 14, 38, 39, 60, 77, 82, 89, 114, 115, 117, 126, 127, 139, 163, 166, 168, 169, 170, 181, 195, 197, 242 Ghetto 65, 184, 195, 238 Ghosh, Amitav 154
Index 275 Giddens, Anthony 258 Gilroy, Paul 117 Global citizenship 127 Global city (cosmopolitan city, see also metropolis) 221, 222, 234, 249 Global economic depression of the 1930s 139 Global vigilance 71 Globalization 21, 25, 28, 31, 36, 37, 41, 43, 54, 61, 65, 83, 116, 154, 155, 162, 174, 175, 243, 245 Greece (Greek) 220, 226, 228–230, 268 Guantanamo Bay (US Army base where terrorist are held) 23, 40, 54–56, 67, 68, 73, 76, 78 Guiliani, Rudolph 122, 125 Gulf War 54 Habermas, Jürgen 115 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, the 33 Haider, Jörg 43 Haitian (Haitians) 23, 54 Hall, Stuart 118 Hanson, Pauline 92, 94 Headscarf (of Muslim, see also religious symbols) 38, 39, 52, 60–63, 261, 262 Health care services 178, 179, 183, 185, 267 Health care workers 167 Hebrew 131 HIV (see AIDS) Holocaust 52 Homogeneity 30, 249 Homosexuality 120 Hostile foreigner 66 Housing (Homeownership) 191–214, 267, 268 Hull, Ida 134 Human rights (international) 28, 31, 34, 37, 44, 51, 52, 69, 108–111, 113–116, 121, 123, 127, 187, 261–263, 265 Human rights activist (and refugee advocates) 126 Humanitarianism 119 Hutton enquiry, Lord (Dr. David Kelly affair) 78 Identification technology 73 Identity 59–60, 69, 101, 116, 117, 217, 233, 234, 261, 264, 265
Identity, Humanitarian 25 Identity, metropolitan 122 Identity, of society 65 Identity, personal 53, 226 Identity, regional 24 Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act US (1996) 43 Illegal immigrants (or undocumented immigrants) 181 Immigrant as social construction 257, 260, 269 Immigrant countries 30 Immigration Act of 1965 US 139 Immigration Act of 1990 US 141 Immigration and Naturalization Service US (INS) 73 Immigration and Refugee Board Canada (IRB) 126 Immigration Bill 1995–1996 US 122, 125 Immigration law 32, 135 Imperialism 127, 249, 269 India (Indians) 57, 104, 125, 126, 147–155, 227 Individualisation of the danger 66, 263 Indonesia (Indonesians) 70, 230 Infectious disease 176–180, 186, 267 Institute for Public Policy Research 119 Institutional racism 118 Integration 25, 89, 101, 105, 110, 111, 120, 121, 137, 139, 140, 159, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 169–171, 191, 196, 201–214, 218, 229, 249, 264, 269 Integrity, personal physical and mental 53, 54 Intelligent services 66, 67, 75–77, 262 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) 181 International Convention and Protocol on refugee status 24 International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) (1965) 53 International Convention on the Rights of All men Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (ICPRMWF) (1990) 53 International Covenant Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) 53 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCOPR/ICCPR) 35, 53, 57, 108
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International Criminal Court 52, 111 International law 69, 261 International Legal order 69 International Monetary Fund 187 International Organization for Migration and the Organization for Economic Internationalisation (Internationalised) 28, 31–34, 41, 147, 151, 154 Internationalism 127 Interpol 75 Iowa, State of 138 Iran (Iranians) 24, 32, 33, 75, 181 Iraq (Iraqi) 21, 57, 67, 69–71, 75, 77, 78, 181 Ireland (Irish) 18, 105, 114, 132, 133, 168 Irregular immigrants (way of migration) 18, 19 Islam (Muslim) 32, 38, 39, 52, 55, 56, 60, 61, 66, 67, 69, 71–74, 117, 120, 122, 123, 127, 195, 225 Islamophobia 51 Israeli–Palestinian 69 Italy (Italians) 14, 43, 75, 88, 114, 133, 134, 163, 168, 222, 224, 232, 233, 247 James, Henry 152 Japan (Japenese) 85, 88, 227 Jefferson, Thomas 131 Jew (Jewish) 38, 52, 60, 107, 134, 261 John Paul II, Pope 123 Joppke, Christian 42 Jordan, Barbara141 Journalism (see media) Judicialisation 42 Jus sanguinis 85, 89 Jus soli 84, 85, 89 Kelly, David 78 Kitschelt, Herbert 83, 84 Korea (Korean) 33, 224, 232, 233, 268 Kosovo (Kosovar Albanians) 2, 21–23, 25 Kurdistan (Kurds) 33 Kureishi, Hanif 147, 148, 151, 153 Labour (UK political party) 122, 163 Labour market 159, 161 Labour mobility 15 Labour Unions 125, 138 Language 105, 129, 130, 133, 136, 138, 153, 170, 185, 224, 229, 265, 266
Language ability and literacy 135, 136, 200–213 Language, English 93, 103, 104, 129–144, 150, 151, 153, 154, 170, 199, 265, 266 Language, French 152, 265 Language, German (see Germans in the US) Language, Greek 133 Language, Native American 131, 265 Language, Spanish 132, 142, 144 Language, Yiddish 133 Latin Americans in US (Hispanics) 76, 125, 139, 144, 191, 192, 194, 198, 199, 201–213 Laurence, Margaret 152 Lebanon (Lebanese) 77, 225, 230 Legal systems of western states 28, 31, 32, 34, 41, 44, 261 Legitimate (criterion of ... / legitimacy) 41, 42, 51, 65, 74, 75, 84, 86, 91 Liberal capitalism 64 Liberal democracy 61–63 Liberal state 262 Linguistic diversity 129, 138, 139 Linguistic homogeneousness 130 Linguistic nationalism 131, 132 Literature, immigrant 147–155, 266 Livingston, Ken 122 Locke, John 62, 130 London 122, 149–152, 195, 238, 245 Lubbers, Ruud 124, 186 M15 (British, see intelligent services) 77 Macedonia (Macedonians) 21 Mafia 66 Malaria 176–178, 181 Mariel Boat Crisis Cuba 1980s 23 Marriages, forced or arranged (involuntary or voluntary) 32, 33, 51, 56–59, 61, 62, 155, 261, 262 Marx, Karl 240 McCarthy era 71, 72, 263 Medef French employer's federation 124 Media (journalism/press/publicity) 28, 30, 64, 65, 75, 77, 92, 94, 105, 116–118, 160, 243, 246, 262, 265 Mediterranean (immigration from the) 88 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) (US–Canada) 20 Metropolis (see also global city) 122, 149, 154
Index 277 Mexico (Mexicans) (border and immigration US) 13, 15–17, 132, 133, 192 Middle East 54, 56, 57, 68, 69, 229 Minority Report (the film) 78 Minority, ethnic 63, 65, 70, 165 Modernity 103, 104, 106, 107, 121, 127, 153 Monolingual countries (monolingualism) 129, 130, 143, 265 Mootoo, Shani 153 Morocco (Moroccans) 34 Multicultural (Society) 25, 30, 37, 59, 62, 96, 115, 120, 121, 130, 147, 151–153, 160, 166, 170, 179, 217–219, 221–224, 227, 232, 234, 268 Multicultural Act 1971 Canada 152, 153 Multicultural Institute, Dutch 123 Multilingual countries (multilingualism) 129, 130, 137, 144 Muslim (see Islam) Muslim–American people 71 Mutual enrichment 64 Myard, Jacques 39 NAFTA 2, 15 Nair, Rukmini Bhaya 154 Nansen Passport 52 Nasta, Susheila 148, 150, 152 Nation 101, 102, 129, 130, 151, 175, 217 Nation Immigration Forum US 125 National Association of Manufacturers US 125, 138 National constitutions 53 National culture and identity 44, 101, 103–105, 108, 129, 147, 150, 152, 153, 155, 219, 264–266 National Education Association US 138 National Front (British extreme right political party) 82 National integrity 130 National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences US 143 Nationalism 83, 84, 101, 102, 105, 106, 110, 149, 264 Nationality 30, 90, 103–105, 110, 227 Nation-state 43, 84, 101, 106–108, 110 Nativism 42 NATO 2 Naturalization 84, 85, 88–91, 93, 133, 135, 136, 140, 144, 196, 197, 200
Nazis 107 Nepal 57 Netherlands (Dutch) 34, 43, 101, 105, 117, 120, 123, 124, 131, 153, 160, 166, 169, 170, 186, 195, 239 Neutralisation of differences 42 Neutrality 38 Neutrality, technical 74 New York 122, 152, 194, 238, 246 New York State 131, 138 New Zealand 24, 84 Nigeria (Nigerian) 38, 103 Nomadism 154 Non-Governmental Organisation (NGOs) 30, 119, 126 Nordic countries (see Scandinavia countries) North Africa 154, 195 Norway (Norwegian) 24 Norwegian freighter Tampa 32 OAU Convention 1969 24, 25 Oceania 192 OECD countries 85 Ondaatje, Micheal 147, 153, 154 One Nation Party (Australian extreme right political party) 83, 91, 92, 94, 95 Open society 61 Oslo Red Cross International Centre 32 Padilla, Jose 73 Pakistan (Pakistani) 24, 32, 55, 57, 59, 70, 119, 181 Palestine 75 Palestinian–Israeli 69 Paris 122, 124 Pen, Jean-Marie Le 85, 92 Pennsylvania 129, 131 Pentagon 70 Peries, Gabriel 72 Philippines 70 Poland (Polish) 88 Polanyi, Karl 240 Police 75 Political leaders 117, 126, 265 Political parties 64, 86, 91, 263 Politically significance of immigrants 82, 86, 91, 93 Politician 28, 65 Politicization of immigrants 85, 88, 264
278
Index
Populist 43 Populist behavior 64 Portugal (Portuguese) 105, 168, 230 Post national citizenship 43 Poverty 182, 183, 186, 267 Pre-emptive defense 77 Press (see media) Prodi, Romano 115 Professional mobility 15 Proposition 187 in California 42, 125, 265 Proposition 227 in California 142 Prostitution (see also Sex industry) 11, 36 Protestantism (Protestants) 133, 135 Publicity (see media) Racism 30, 32, 39, 51, 56, 72, 74, 82, 84, 86, 87, 92, 116, 117, 122, 141, 144, 150, 161, 179, 184, 265 Radical Muslim 65, 72 Refugee Convention 1951 32 Refugee Protection Division Canada 126 Religion 133, 153 Religious leaders 123, 265 Religious norms 62 Religious symbols (Christian Cross, Jewish calotte, Sikh turbans and Muslim headscarf) 52, 60, 261 Remington, Stella 77 Remittances, home economy through 16 Research Directorate with Documentation Centre Canada 126 Restrictionists 135, 136, 137, 139 Right-wing anti-immigrant political parties (see extreme right political parties) 42 Riker, William 88 Rogue states 70 Roma (Gypsies) 109 Roy, Arundhati 154 Rushdie, Salman 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155 Russia (Russian) 69, 103, 114, 183, 231 Rwanda (Rwandese) 54 Safe country of origin 18 Safe third country 18, 20 Said, Edward 127 San Francisco 122, 238 Sangatte 19, 118 Saudi Arabia 68, 70, 195
Scandinavia countries 60, 132, 135, 161, 164 Scheffer, Paul 120 Schmittian momentum 72, 263 Schools 30 Schröder, Gerhard 126, 127 Schuck, Peter 44 Sects 60 Secular state 60 Secularism 38, 61 Segregation 174, 195 Selvon, Sam 148 Senior citizens EU 14 Serbia (Serbian) 21 Seth, Vikram 153, 154 Sex industry 181, 185 Shared Accord on Our Border 1995 (US–Canada) 20 Sikh turbans 60 Silicon Valley 125 Simpson, Alan 125 Skilled labour migrants 159, 160, 162, 165, 166, 167, 185, 239, 245, 249 Skinheads 109 Slave trade 52 Slavic languages 133 Slovakia (Slovaks) 109 Smarts Border Declaration 2001 (US–Canada) 20 Software specialist (from India and Eastern Europe) 126 Somalia (Somalian) 21, 54, 70 Southern Europe 134, 135, 139 Sovereign 17, 101 Sovereign right 160 Sovereignty 69, 101, 106–108, 110, 111 Soviet Union, former states of 182 Soysal, Yasemin 43 Spain (Spanish) 75, 105, 114 Special Program for Cuban Migration (‘Cuban Visa Lottery’) 23 Spill over (rights) 28, 29, 41, 44, 45, 261 Sri Lanka (Sri Lankan) 35, 54, 153, 154, 182 State religion 60 Stereotypes 248 Students EU 14, 15 Sudan (Sudan's) 70, 182 Supranationalising 111, 163, 168 Supreme Court of Canada 35
Index 279 Supreme Court of Canada case, Suresh (Sri Lankan: Tamil) 35 Surveillance technology 72 Sweden (Swedish) 33, 59, 105, 124, 160, 161, 165, 170 Swing voters (immigrant as) 85, 86, 88, 91, 93, 264 Switzerland 130 Syal, Meera 148, 151, 153 Sydney 217, 220–225, 230, 232–234, 238, 247, 268 Syria 55 Tabloid press 28, 119 Taiwan (Taiwanese) 239 Taliban 24, 32, 40, 69 Tamil (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam LTTE) 35 Tanzania (Tanzanians) 119, 181 Technocracy 102 Temporary Production Directive EU (2002) 22 Tennessee 125 Terrorism (terrorist, war against terror) 16, 18, 35, 40, 42, 51, 55, 56, 63, 66–71, 73–78, 107, 108, 120, 183, 186, 263 Terrorism Information Awareness Project 73 Thailand (Thai) 36, 223 Togo 38 Tolerance 37, 121, 129, 174, 179 Tonga 230 Tories (see Conservatives) Toronto 154, 238 Torture 31, 35, 54, 55, 63, 110, 179, 261 Total Awareness Project 73 Tourist industry, immigrant 240–250, 269 Transcultural 152 Transit countries 55 Transnational citizens 42 Transnationalisation 64, 65 Treaty of Amsterdam 1997 (EU) 18, 124 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (US–Mexico) 132 Treaty of Maastricht 1992 (EU) 14, 18 Treaty of Rome 1957 (EU) 12, 14 Trust 25 Tuberculosis 176–178, 186 Turkey (Turkish) 34, 38, 55, 57, 58
UK (Great Britain/British) 1, 18, 19, 35, 59, 74, 75, 78, 103–108, 110, 113, 114, 117–120, 122, 124, 133, 135, 147–160, 163, 166, 168, 170, 180, 181, 185, 186, 227, 247, 262, 268 UK Court for Appeal 42, 108 UK High Court Justice Collins 43 UK Home Office 104, 161 UK National Health Service 184 UK Select Committee on Home Affairs 107 UK Special Immigration Appeal Commission 108 Uniformity 30 Unilateralism 76 United Nations 180, 181 United Nations Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages (1962) 57 United Nations Convention on the Prevention of Torture (1984) 54 United Nations Conventions (on human rights) 53, 62, 187 United Nations Global Commission on Migration124 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 119, 124, 181, 186 United Nations Population Division 115 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (1948) 22, 53, 113 Universalised (Universally) 28, 41, 44, 62, 148 US Board of Immigration Appeals 38, 45 US Board of Immigration Appeals case, In re Fauziya Kasinga 38, 45 US Census Bureau 125 US citizenship 38 US Commission on Immigration Reform 141, 142 US Court of Appeal 38 US Homeland Security Department 67, 70, 75 US identity 23 US Justice Brewer, Fong Yue Ting Chinese exclusion case (1893) 41 US Patriot Act 67, 68 US Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy 139–141 US State Department 67, 70
280
Index
US Supreme Court 42, 45, 68, 142 US Supreme Court cases, Kim v Denmore 42; Plyler v Doe 42, 45; Lau v Nichols 142; USSR 70 US–Canada Border Vision (1997) 20 US–Canada Declaration 15 US–Cuba Migration Accord (1994) 23 Vatican Council II Decleration Nostra aetate122 Vaz, Keith 103 Veil, Simone 14 Venezuela 70 Vietnam (Vietnamese) 143, 220, 224–226, 228, 230, 268 Vilsack, Tom 126 Virtualisation 78 Wahhabite Islam 72 Weapons of mass destruction (see also terrorism) 66, 67, 70, 74, 77, 78 Webster, Noah 130, 131 Welfare state 64, 65, 159–171, 266
Westphalian Peace 1648 52 Wilson, William Julius 195 Wisconsin 132 Women (see feminism) World Bank 183, 184, 187 World Health Organisation 175 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg 183 World War I 136 World War II 14, 21, 52, 70, 83, 88, 230 World War II, post period 31, 88, 152, 154, 261 Xenophobia 30, 42, 51, 56, 82–84, 86–88, 92, 96, 117, 123, 139, 141, 144 Yee, James J. 73 Yugoslavia 21, 108 Zukin, S. 244, 245, 249, 250
